


Out of darkness

by imsfire



Category: Solo Quiero Caminar
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Félix is dead no redemption for him sorry!, NSFW, New Beginning, Smut and Feels, battered but surviving, does Gabriel have a surname? I don't remember if so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2018-11-28 13:26:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11418897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: He lies in the dark, remembering with a brilliant vividness the young woman walking away from him, her straight back, swinging hips, sweet beauty going into the dark.  He’s there now in the depths of darkness and it still isn’t over.  He wonders how long it truly takes to die.  His breathing seems to be quite steady, and the pain has vanished.  So there’s that at least.  Interesting to know.  Dying, in these final stages; not painful...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, this happens. Get a crush on an actor, watch some more of their work, discover a terrific film you would never have seen without that motive; bond online with other fans of said film; write a fix-it story for the heroine and her doomed lover. Just your normal everyday fandom stuff. Because "Solo quiero caminar" is a damned good thriller and doomed love is obviously my thing...

So, he watches her.

The street is dark, and she is walking into the dark; he isn’t quite sure where the borders of the darkness lie, in the pools of streetlight or in himself.  His eyes aren’t working quite right anymore, and he clings on to the last sweet thing he will see, clings to the sight of her walking, as his brain clings to the last sweet thing it will know, the memory ( _remember me_ _remember me_ ) the memory of her body her lips the sadness in her eyes…

The blood running down his hip and pooling in the plastic seat is sickly, stickily hot and he is beginning to feel numb inside, the pain putting itself at a distance from him.

The street is dark, and Aurora walks into the dark, and he goes into the dark watching her.

**

Dark indeed, long dark, long like a bad childhood, like a fever, like fear.

He can feel something in the darkness.  A surface under his fingertips.  He touches it.  Firm.  Not hard but firm.  Neither warm nor cold.  Motionless; not something alive.  When he moves his hand, curls his fingers, his nails find a faint texture beneath them.  Roughness, very delicate, structured, something interwoven, woven.  Fabric.

He can’t open his eyes, because dead men do not see.  Then he does; and sees nothing.  Lies in the dark, remembering with a brilliant vividness the young woman walking away from him, her straight back, swinging hips, sweet beauty going into the dark.  He’s there now in the depths of darkness and it still isn’t over.  He wonders how long it truly takes to die.

His breathing seems to be quite steady, and the pain has vanished.  So there’s that at least.  Interesting to know.  Dying, in these final stages; not painful.

He wonders if all the men he’s killed had a split second of this stillness in them, this quiet, troubled peace, before their shot hearts stopped.

On his left there’s something that isn’t darkness.  It looks, weirdly, like the outline of a door, with a light behind it.

Gabriel would laugh if he had the strength or the breath left for it.  The door to heaven, right there, shut in his face.  Fair enough.  It’s hardly a surprise to learn he didn’t do enough to merit redemption.  Even now, even from here on the wrong side, the light beyond the door is strangely beautiful.  Thin lines like the angels’ lances, violent unearthly light of paradise, cutting through the endless night.  Even if he didn’t make it, then, heaven does exist.

Curious how comforting that is.  It’s not for him, but it is there, for others.  _Blessed Mother of God_ and the words float up into his mind and he can’t remember the next line but even the start of the prayer sounds sweet _Blessed Mother of God_

Blessed Mother of God

Is this my consolation?

If this is all, I am content

Darkness

**

The next time he wakes, he sees a regular door, and daylight; and he’s in a small grey room, in a bed, with a pillow beneath his head.  Things bleep. 

His left side and his hand both hurt.  He has no idea why his hand hurts.

It isn’t until a nurse comes in, and he tries to say “What happened?” and cannot speak that he realises he’s been intubated.  One of the beeping machines is helping him to keep breathing.

It’s really true, then.  He’s alive.

“Ah, good morning,” says the nurse when his desperate eyes meet hers.  “Good, good.”  He blinks at her.  She nods her head though she cannot possibly know what he’s trying to say; checks the machinery, leaves him alone again.  He lies looking up, staring at the reality of not being dead.

Later, for the rest of the day, doctors and other nurses come and go, and in between their visits  he stares up and sees the plaster panels overhead, the support struts, the light fitting with the plain fabric shade.  In his hearing all they will say is courteous, neutral, encouraging things, like _relax, you need to rest_ and _it was touch and go for a while there but you’ll pull through_ and _excellent, normal blood pressure_.

Someone must have called an ambulance.  The man behind the counter, perhaps.  How wonderful after all his dark deeds to owe his life to some ordinary act of compassion, a little man at a diner counter making a telephone call.

And someone must be footing the cost of all this.  Félix, presumably, the sonofabitch would do a thing like that, after all.  No doubt he’ll refuse ever to speak to Gabriel again, but he’ll still pay his hospital bill; out of some sick sense of honour, or to prove his ownership, one last time.

On the second day he has a visitor.  Not Félix, not any of the crew, but Doña Cecilia.  He can see the shadows of her guards outside, one on either side of the door, but she comes in alone and stands looking down at him.   Gives him a faint smile from on high, like the royalty she is.

“So, young Archangel, you’re still with us, then.  You have a little breathing space.  Time to think things through, eh? - make that decision we talked about.”

She doesn’t stay long, and doesn’t tell him anything about the rest of them.  That’s bad, he thinks, with a coldness settling in his chest alongside the pain that seems to live there now.  It could mean many things, and none of them are good.

They take the breathing tube out two days later.  He wonders what to ask, now that he’ll be able to speak again.  Outside this little grey room, he has no idea of the shape of the world anymore.  No idea even of who is living and who is dead.  All he knows is that he should have been among the latter, and somehow he is not.

The doctor supervising the extubation asks him a couple of pointless questions, inspects his stitches, listens to his chest and abdomen, congratulates him on being alive; leaves.  The nurses renew the dressing on his wound, check his catheter  and the drip in his arm, give him sips of water from a cup like a baby’s beaker and promise him a first taste of solid food that evening.  Soup, they say, as though it were manna.  It sounds like manna.  Chicken soup with vegetables.

It’s then that he decides to ask one question; the only one he has some hope will be safe.  His voice sounds like sawdust.  “Please, who called the ambulance?” 

“Señor?”

“How did I get here? – the guy in the diner, did he call an ambulance, was it him?  I’d like to thank him, when I get out.” 

Saying that much has made everything hurt, and the nearer of the two nurses touches his hand gently.  “I don’t know, Señor, but I can find out for you.  Would you like that?  Now you need to rest, you’ve had a tiring day.”

Strange to be petted, so, and spoken to like that; as though he’s a sick five-year-old, not a grown man and a murderer. 

He nods, whispers a thank you, accepting her authority and her kindness.  Stares up at the ceiling when the two of them leave, and is asleep within minutes.

**

“I found out the answer, Señor.  To your question.  I checked the records and apparently it was an anonymous caller.   A young woman, calling from a cell-phone.”

 _Blessed Mother of God, is this my consolation?  If this is to be all, I am content.  I remembered her, and she did not forget me.  Holy Mary, Mother of God, thank you, thank you_ …

“It’s nice to see a patient smile like that,” one nurse is saying to the other as they leave the room.  “He looks happy to be alive for the first time.”

**

Doña Cecelia comes again the next day, and the rest of his questions are answered; and after that conversation, he lies shaking and unable to sleep, long into the night, in the darkness.

**

By the time Gabriel stands in front of a mirror for the first time and looks at himself with his bandages and dressings off, Félix and the boys, and the Señora, are all long buried, and he knows that there has been a guard on the door of his room the entire time, not just when Doña Cecelia visits.  The same guard who is now outside the hospital bathroom where he’s being prepared for his shower.  He’s too weak to do the job for himself safely (and though his spirit bridles at hearing that, he has to admit the doctor is right; he can barely stand unaided after these weeks bedbound and inert).  He must bear being manhandled and washed by a stranger; like a small boy, like an orphan.  It’s a peculiarly precise embarrassment.

He hangs on to the handles in the tiled wall with shaking arms, looks straight ahead, refuses to acknowledge the humiliation.   Thanks the nurse afterwards.

The mirror had steamed up within moments.  He’d had enough of the view anyway.  Always lean, he’s now painfully thin; cheekbones jutting, muscles wasted and slack.  Yet his beard has grown well.  He looks like a revolutionary out of a kids’ history book; gaunt and angry, savage-eyed, and superbly moustachioed.

The scar on his abdomen is huge; easily four times the length he’d anticipated when he first felt the wound.  Where the knife went in there’s a ragged three centimetre slash but that’s just the start; it extends above and off to the side now, neat surgical incisions.  Its whole length sutured up with stitches black as boars’ bristles, delicate as lace. 

It itches and aches, and it feels as though every organ inside hurts too, despite the analgesia. 

The cannula in his hand itches too, and the skin under the tape holding it down is inflamed.  It won’t be taken out for another three to four days.  They’re still pumping antibiotics into him through it.  The consultant tells him smoothly that he should focus on making a good recovery instead of grumbling about a few square centimetres of rash.  Partial splenectomy, traumatic injury to the large and small intestines and the left lobe of the liver, a punctured lung, and massive blood loss; plus a chip out of the anterior end of one rib.  He had to ask for explanations of some of the medical terms, but now he knows, he’ll remember.

“You nearly died,” Doña Cecelia tells him firmly.  “Next time don’t be so slow.  I shouldn’t have to keep telling you these things.  It’s time to get out of this life, Gabriel.”  She stands over him, looking down her regal nose; although her voice is kind she’s never lowered herself to the level of giving him so much as a pat on the hand.  “I’ll pay to keep you alive,” she tells him now “because you were always a good boy to me and I don’t like the idea of your handsome face wasting into dust just yet.  But I won’t give you a job, after.  You need to understand that.  You were Félix’s man and I don’t want that association.” 

“Of course, Doña Cecelia.  And thank you.  I am forever in your debt, beyond anything I can ever hope to repay.”

“Really?  Well, since you put it so nicely, you young gallant.  So - don’t be an idiot, then.  Live, and make a new start.  Since that idiot Félix made you his residuary heir and his poor whore of a wife predeceased him, you aren’t without resources.”

“I don’t want to carry on that business.”

“I should hope not!  That isn’t what I’m paying good money for.  You’d be back in this place, in the morgue, within a week, the way things are at present.  Why do you think I have a man stationed outside here right now, eh?  The business has as good as collapsed anyway.  But the properties he owned, those still have solid value.  Think about it; make up your mind what to do, and then do it.  Action has a magic of its own.  Didn’t some poet say that?  So act.”

“I will, Doña Cecelia.  I know what I’m going to do.”

She smiles at that.  “Tell a lady your plans?  I’d like to think of you going out from here soon and finding yourself a life that won’t kill you.  What are you off to do, then?”

Gabriel smiles, slowly, letting himself hope for the first time he can remember.  “I’m going to Spain.”


	2. Chapter 2

He starts in the only place he can.  Algeciras.  The sea is fiery blue in the spring light, the town comfortably dirty and alive.  Kids drinking cola on the sea front; a market, a shopping mall, a few tourists; ferries putting in and heading out, and the perpetual smell of fish and dust in the air.  The big British rock at the end of the bay, a bulk like an elephant turd, streaked with chalk-white.

A simple place to stay the night, right on the waterfront, Hotel El Bahía; unpretentious, nondescript, the room is small but the bed is good, and he pays extra for a window looking onto the sea.  The sea, not the ocean; not the waters he dimly remembers from some long-ago trip, the memory of warm Pacific waves and sand, all tangled with a child’s fears and hopes and desperations; this is the Sea, the Mediterranean, the hot enclosed sea of legends and histories and myths that are not his own.  Aurora’s sea.

Did she ever pass this hotel, look at this self-same view?  He drinks his coffee in the ground floor bar, looking out at the azure water, the dusty sun umbrellas.  Gulls drift by in the distance, white as torn paper between blue and blue. 

There’s a public library, and a librarian who smiles, and remarks on his accent; asks “Are you trying to trace family here?”

“An old friend.”  Gabriel smiles back.  It’s strange how the untruth doesn’t feel like lying.  Did he even exchange a hundred words with Aurora?  Yet the memory of her feels as real as any in his life; she’s everything vivid and concrete, her complete certainty of self, calm and brave with him, her face bending unhesitatingly into the kiss and then not looking back.  He smiles at the kindly woman looking up at him from the desk, and accepts the help she offers without looking for motives.

It still feels strange to do this, living without calculation, finding and understanding his own emotions, smiling just for himself.  He’s barely known what it is to feel at all, the last few years.  He must remember to be calm with himself, not to panic and shut his mind to this strangeness. 

His heart is on fire as he reads the local telephone directory.  The air-conditioned reading room is cool and quiet, and the cool and quiet do nothing but inflame him further.

There are dozens of Rodriguez’s but no Aurora.  The cold place under his rib opens up again, it aches with the certainty of coming failure.  He’ll never find her – he’ll find her and she’ll be gone – he’ll find her dead - or find her married after all, he’ll find she was a woman who would lie to console a dying man and that mere small kindness will kill him now – and he tells himself _Shut up, shut up, cabrón, shut up you idiot_ and closes the pages, flips to the publication date at the front.  The directory was issued last month.  Just to be certain, he takes it back to the desk and asks for last year’s.

Waiting for it to be fetched his hands are shaking and again the inner voice starts up with its chatter.  He never had an inner voice before.  He’ll find her gone, he’ll find her and she won’t remember him, or she’ll look at him with ice in her eyes and he will go back to Mexico to find out what it is to grow old and be this much alone…

He turns whole slabs of pages thumping together, D to M to R, and individual sheets crumple as he leafs through them.  His thin fingers slip on the coloured paper: Radigüer, Rafael, Reyes, Rocio, Rodrigues, **Rodriguez** – and – Abraham Alvise Amaral Antonia Antonio – a stack of Antonio’s –

Aurora.

He’d breathing deep and fast, his nostrils flaring; he has to blink back moisture in his eyes and for a moment his mouth works with shock, before he permits himself to go into the place of emotion again.  To feel this shock, this hope, so intense, almost painful.  To smile this hard.  He’s found her name, and the street she lived on, a year ago.

He thinks of paying bribes or offering threats, of what once would have been his only move now, and his smile shifts sideways and grows even more incredulous as he realises he will not do any of that.  It’s an idiot grin, but he’s an idiot with happiness.  He never really had any hope of it before, he thinks, this thing called happiness; all the hope was just threads, like hairs tickling his skin. 

Dark hairs, long dark hair, he remembers the silken feel of that hair gathered in his hands, heavy, unbound.  If he’s to merit this, he must be whole in his commitment.  No more of Félix’s methods.

He’s not there yet, but it’s a start, and he’ll follow as far as he can, walking down this road.

It takes a few days, a few times standing in front of a stranger and asking plainly for help; but by mid-week he knows where she moved to.  In the course of those questions and requests he hears the word “stalking” used and feels that inward fear again, though the speaker says it only in passing. 

_Am I a stalker?  Will she see it that way?_

_Should I go home now and put this insane idea out of my mind?_

And then he is standing in the hallway of an apartment building, outside the door of flat 1A-left, as the naïvely chatty occupant tells him that 1A-right has gone away on holiday and won’t be back till Saturday.  He asks “Where did she go?” and is told

“Mexico.  Mexico City.  She was pretty excited about it.”

He’s shaking.  For a moment it’s hard not to sink down on the tiled floor.  All the excitement and anxiety of the last few days is suddenly a focussed point like a laser, and it strikes him in the side, there where each muscle lines up along the memory of that killing blow and that pain.

“Oh no.  No, no, no.  I’ve just come from there.”

“I thought you had that accent,” says the neighbour.  He leans on the door jamb, amiable and very young, and stoned, his frayed yellow jersey hanging around him, too long at the hips and in the arms, a roll-up in his grinning lips.

Gabriel would like to tell him he needs to be more careful.  If he were a stalker he’s just been told far more than he has a right to know. 

But he isn’t, and he won’t come back to the apartment until she invites him.  He’ll watch from outside.  It’s still stalking, it’s disconcertingly close to the way he staked her out, before; but what else can he do?  He came here to find her. 

“Here” is Granada; she moved inland, into the mountains, into the city.  He has a hire car now, and a room in another hotel, a high-ceilinged room overlooking the Plaza Bib-Rambla with its fountain and its café tables.  A bronze Neptune above the fountain exhorts passers-by to raise their eyes to heaven.  Beneath the god’s feet is a row of stone lions’ heads with green moss dripping in their eyes; pigeons bathe in the lower basin and tourists sit on the edge as the afternoon sun beats down on them.  Gabriel sits on his balcony and pictures Aurora below, stopping, looking up at him.  She must have passed those weeping lions so many times.  

Locals sit under the arcades in the shade, and above the square the squat bell tower of the Cathedral rises in the heat.  Over the rooftops he can see the Torre de la Vela and the walls of the Alhambra, pale and rose-gold on their hillside.

He could be perfectly happy too, he thinks, living here between Neptune and Christ, looking up to the hills.

He can’t rest.  The remainder of that day and all of the next he quarters the streets, looking, seeing, touching.  It’s a consolation to his eyes in her absence.  Her roads, her cafés and stores and market stalls, all the places where she lives now, the pavements where she walks.   He is in her world, while she is in his.  He imagines her visiting her sister’s grave, carrying an armful of flowers, granting herself the blessing of farewell.  Until she returns, he can watch over her streets and know that if he leaves now he’ll cause her no grief, no thought at all.  Until she comes. 

There are long shadows and the Calle Marqués de Gerona is cool in the shade and busy with the beginning of evening.  In the Bar La Riffeña the TV is showing the UEFA cup, and when he orders a drink it comes with a dish of olives and cubes of cheese, and a small slice of bread.   Gabriel takes a seat on the terrace, where he can enjoy the evening air and watch both the street and the screen.  The second rum, half an hour later, brings a spoonful of scrambled egg with asparagus, and more bread.  By now he’s enjoying the match even though neither of the teams is his.  Sevilla have just equalised, to the delight of the regulars at the zinc. 

The third drink gains him a tiny dish of Russian salad, tangy with gherkins.  At this rate he’ll have an entire meal gratis if he orders enough drinks.  _¡Viva Andalucía!_

At the next table two exhausted Italians are poring over a spread map and downing large beers.  There’s a goldfinch in a cage hung over the terrace; it hops about, singing over the buzz of talk and street noise, the rapid glee of the sports commentary.  At first he doesn’t hear the sound of suitcase wheels, and then thinks nothing of it when he does, such an ordinary noise, rattling and meaningless.  Then he sees her.

Aurora Rodriguez, in her scarlet jacket, wheeling a bulky grey case towards him.  His eyes go to her as to a fire in the street.

He’d forgotten, he thinks, though he’d thought he remembered every nuance; her lips, her hair, her way of walking as though the guilty world were laying its heart beneath her shoes.

There’s no chance to think through what he will say, or to hide himself.  She’s forty metres away, thirty, twenty, and still walking.  She’s looking straight past him; her eyes are tired and both glad and sad, so that he wonders what she’s seen in Mexico City; does she know something now, for sorrow or for peace, that she did not know before?  He’s looking at her approach as if she’s just marched down from paradise with her case in tow, and as she comes nearer he turns his head involuntarily to keep her in his sight.  A slow movement, focussed upon her, like a fixed star.  She sees it and it draws her eye, her glance catches onto his, a hand catching on a rough edge of silk.  She takes two more steps and comes to a halt, ten metres away, with her lips parting.  Impassive, watching; then very slowly, slow as heaven, smiling.

The last time he saw her, her lip had still been split, her face bruised, from Félix’s fists.  She’d looked at him with defensive eyes.  He’d known he would have died for her, to atone for what had been done to her and her family, if he had not already been dying.

He stands, to meet her on his feet.

He’s never been a man given to fear; he barely recognises it, it’s so unfamiliar, this thundering of his heart against his sore, scarred ribs.  She is smiling at him and he is afraid.

He’d wanted to smile at her.  In all his dreams of this moment he has been smiling.  But his lips will not move, except, for a second, to open, breathless, silent.  He exhales.  His throat tightens on a thousand unsaid things.

Aurora takes the next step, and the next, careful, deliberate.  The suitcase bumps heavily on the cobbles behind her each time. 

“Gabriel?”  So guarded; she was always ice, she was a loaded gun, an averted head, a figure walking away…  Her smile wavers and grows cautious, readying herself to strike or to turn away, and his heart tears apart.  He forces himself into a smile as frail as breathing.

“It’s you.” 

Which of them was it who spoke?  There’s so much tension in his ribs, his spine, he’s a steel guitar string, taut and tightening, coming into tune at last.

“Aurora.”

One more step forward, one more crunch of the suitcase wheels; and Gabriel inhales and flexes his hands, and takes a step also.  Suddenly he’s almost panting for air; but light seems to flood into him as his smile anchors itself in her.  “Aurora.  _Aurora_ …”

“Be careful,” she says.  “You’ll hyperventilate.”  Her smile grows again.  It gives him life.  All the muscles in his face seem to be twisting, a stupid grin coming and going, helplessly shy.

His hands are shaking, that brief mortal fear still racing in his veins.  He reaches for her and she for him, their fingertips touch suddenly and she presses her lips together and then beams, quivering with mirth that is half shock.  “I’m glad to see you.”

“Would you like a drink?—“

The electrifying touch on his fingers, the dark eyes on his; humour, astonishment, joy.  Their hands slide into one another and clasp.  He’s not sure whether it’s her that is trembling, or him.  Where the boundary is.  She’s barely fifty centimetres away and he can feel the warmth of her body and smell a clean herbal scent coming off her, not perfume but some pleasant everyday thing like shampoo.  Her skin is unblemished, a slight blush of suntan on her brow, her nose, her cheekbones.

“To drink?—“

“Something to drink?—“

They’re speaking over and through one another, still holding hands.  He begins consciously to try and slow his breathing.  “A drink, yes.”

“Perhaps a – a beer…”

“Of course.”

Somehow, he’s holding a chair for her; somehow he’s managed to let go her hand for a few moments.  She sits, looking up at him as he tucks her seat in; and as he takes his own again their hands find one another and grab, and hold on.

He eyes her lips her touch…

He’d like to bring her hand to his forehead in fealty; to his lips, in worship.  She’s here, she’s beside him, he found her.


	3. Chapter 3

Inside the bar, FC Porto have taken the lead and the locals are groaning.  Outside, the Italians are onto glasses of _tinto di verano_ and cheese-and-ham crepes, and arguing about whether to drive to Cordoba in the morning or take the train.  And a waiter brings two bottles of cerveza Alhambra for the couple sitting at the front corner table, and grins as he sees their hands so tightly linked and their eyes so intense upon one another.

“I went back,” Aurora says.

“I know.”

“Fuck, I’m so jetlagged.  How do you know?”

“Your neighbour.”

“Eugenio?  Little sneak.  Was he wrecked?”

“A little.”

She smiles again.  “It’s funny that you came here while I was –“

“Yeah.”  It is, she’s right.

“I wanted to be sure my sister had been properly buried.  And – you.  I needed to know –“

“I owe you my life.  It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You saved me.”  He thinks, her warm hand tight in his.  “You saved me twice.”

She shrugs.  “I suppose.”  Her grip is strong, her long fingers tightening, and he squeezes back, touch saying what perhaps words cannot.  _My life, your life, my life is yours now_ …

“Why?  Why make the call?”

She’s silent for a moment, her mouth curving in and out of a secret smile.  Her face is open, eyes unexpectedly peaceful on his.  “Ah, Gabriel…  It’s good to say your name, to see your face.  I liked your face.  And your hands, you had good hands.”  She presses them in hers, smiling.  “Gabriel, I had seen my sister die that afternoon.  I was with her.  I held her in my arms as she went.  She was warm, breathing, and then not.  She lay so heavy.  She always was a heavy sleeper.  It was like when we were kids.  But the monitor was, you know, going off…  Flat-lining.  The last person I’d held on my breast had been you.  I couldn’t – I couldn’t bear the idea of you both, dead.  I couldn’t bear not even to try.  I didn’t know if it was worth it.  You’d lost a lot of blood –“ she breaks off, her gaze moving from their linked hands to his body, to the folds of the plain shirt he wears, as if she expects for a moment to see scarlet on the white again, blooming and soaking down.  She bites her lip.  “I’m glad you made it.”

“I almost didn’t, apparently.”

“Big scar?”

“Very.”

A pause.  He needs to give her back something of equal value, in return for that picture of the Señora dying at peace in a sister’s arms.  He would never have asked to know something so intimate.  Yet here it is, freely shared.  “It’s my biggest.  But I hope my last.  I have to change my life.  I have to remake myself, make myself anew.  I don’t deserve the chance you gave me.  I want to deserve it.  But I do not know how.”

“No more of Félix, then?”

“Of course no more.  He’s dead.”

She starts at that, her brows springing up and knotting in a frown.  “Dead?”

“Suicide.”

“Good,” Aurora says with an emphasis that is not anger but absolute certainty.  “ _Good_.”

“No-one told you, back there?”  But who would she have spoken to?  They would none of them never have known she’d passed through before, if he had not been watching for her.  None of them ever met her bar him and Félix, and Cayuco, who he killed.

“I didn’t ask anyone.  I tried to avoid being seen.  Visited Ana’s grave each day.  Otherwise – I saw the sights.” Her mouth quirks.  “The National Museum, the Zocalo, the Templo Mayor; I didn’t expect to go back there so –“ A shrug.  “I noticed the house was for sale, when I went past, and the warehouse; and there were new people coming and going, not one face I recognised.”

He nods.  “They’re all dead.”  And it isn’t a comfortable thing to say, but “I – have to tell you.  Félix’s will – he left your sister well-provided for.  But she died before him, so – I don’t know why he did this, but - it all came to me.  The business is gone, but what was left, the buildings, cars, property.  I put it all up for sale.  I’m out.  But you should have it, the money, it should have gone to the Señora, it ought to come to you…”

“I don’t want that fucker’s money.”

“Okay.”  It isn’t what he wants to do.  He was no longer Félix’s man by then, he has no right to a single peso of it.  But he cannot argue with her sentiments.  A sudden thought rises and “I’m not offering you money, I mean, not like – not paying you off or –“

“I know.”  She pauses, reflective.  “I meant, I don’t want any money of his gift, of his will.  The money we took, that’s different.”

“Of course.”  He squeezes her hand in acceptance.  “That was why he killed himself, you know.  Losing that money destroyed everything.”

“Good,” she says again.  “We killed him.”  Her eyes flash for a second and then her expression softens.  “I seem hard to you.  I know he was your friend.  He could have shot you that night but he didn’t.  But he killed my sister.”

He nods again.  He understands her perfectly.

“What really happened with Ana?” she asks.  “Everyone at the hospital said it was an accident, but Gloria told me he used to beat her, so…”

Gabriel has to close his eyes for a second.  Shame holds his breath; he makes himself nod once more.  Remembers the Señora bruised, remembers the rage and hate in her blacked eyes, and the terror, muted and banked down but real.  Remembers his own shame in recognising it and not acting.  “I knew.  I knew and I did nothing.  It should have been me that died.  I wanted to protect her but – she was his wife – and I did nothing.”

“She made a bad choice,” Aurora says.  “I didn’t try to stop her marrying him, I could have but I didn’t.  So don’t think you’re the only one to blame.  She was an adult.  Not his to own, but not yours or mine to rescue, either…  But – please tell me the truth - it wasn’t really an accident, was it?”

He has to shake his head.  “Félix always insisted to me that it was.  He insisted so much I – I think it might not have been.  But I wasn’t there…  I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything definite.”  It will have to be enough, as he has nothing more.  He won’t lie to her.

She swallows, looking away for a moment, down at their hands still linked on the café table, their fingers curling together.  Her thumb strokes the base of one of his nails gently.  “Were they - ever happy?  At the beginning?”

“Félix was delirious at first.  I know it’s hard to believe, but he really thought he was doing something very romantic.”

A mirthless breath of laughter and she says “I think for Ana it was mostly practical.  A way out.  I’m sorry she made the choice but she had the right.”

“He was never going to give her a way out of anything, he loved to own people - but how could she have known that?  They’d only met once, and then –“

“Exactly.”

She takes a long pull of the cold beer and he echoes the movement and drinks with her.

He doesn’t want to think about Félix, or about their friendship, doesn’t want to remember the certainty he’d felt, secure in his skills and his role, his place in a strong man’s world; the years of pretending he didn’t see all the things he should never have accepted.

Aurora sets down her glass.  He wonders what she is thinking of.  He won’t ask.  She has a right to her own regrets. 

She looks him in the eye as he puts his own drink down.  “What do you want, Gabriel?”

“Ah.”  He wishes he had an answer for her.  His jaw tightens on dreams he can’t express; for the past to be undone, for the redemption in her hands.  But she’s asking straight out what he wants with her, and this was bound to come.  All he can say is “I’m sorry.”

She blinks; then “You said you want to remake your life.  What do you want for your life, now?”

He reminds  himself, _do not shut down, do not panic, you have saved this woman and she saved you, and that is no small thing_. 

His mind had slid immediately into that assumption that this was the moment she would push him away again.  Immediate, and it would seem, wrong.

He draws breath to try and find words.  Nothing but uncertainty in him.

“Truly, I’m not sure.  I have no skills.  None I can be proud of, anyway.  I suppose I should start some kind of business, but what?  I want peace, and to do some good for someone.  I never did anything good for anyone before.”

“Me,” she reminds him.  She thinks for a moment; smiles gently. “Is there anything you can teach?”

“Teach?” His brows knit and a baffled grin spreads across his face.  “Me, a teacher?”

“I’m training to.  Self-defence for women.”  Aurora’s smile broadens slowly with pride.  “I’m good at it.”

He can imagine it, too.  His grin spreads and becomes foolish with pleasure at the thought of her teaching others to walk her way, to stand their ground and tread down the hearts of those that harm them.  He lifts both her hands in his and kisses them.  “That’s wonderful.”

“I know what you could teach,” she says.  She detaches one hand from his grip and raises it to brush a lock of his hair, almost shyly.  He turns eager as a cat into her touch.  “You could teach marksmanship.”

Gabriel feels his whole face flinch.  “Shooting.  No.  No, I can’t.”

“I’m sorry.  Of course not.  You said ‘remake’.  I didn’t think…”  Her fingers are resting against his cheek, not letting go.

“I want to leave all that behind,” he tells her.  “Besides –“ he swallows and looks into her eyes, wonders if she can read all the desire in him, and the longing, and the fear “- how would I explain how I learned to shoot?  I don’t have any qualifications, you know?”

She blows air out scornfully. “Details!” and for an astonishing moment they are almost laughing together.  Then she yawns and twists her mouth to try and hide it; fails, grins round it, eyes scrunching up for a second.  “Fuck.  So much jet-lag…”

“I should let you go home.” 

“Help me with my case?”

_Oh, Aurora, do you know what you are saying to me?  You know, dear God, you know.  Blessed Mother of God, how did this ever happen?_

“Of course.  If you’re sure.”

She smiles at that, weary and sleepy-eyed, and certain.  “I know you’ll treat me well.”

They drain their glasses and he puts money under one of the tapas dishes, and follows her back onto the street.


	4. Chapter 4

The apartment door he’s only seen closed; it opens with two sets of keys, top and middle, and inside is a dim brown corridor and another open door ahead, a room lit by bars of light lancing through slatted shutters.  In the end he’s only carried the case on the stairs, the moment he set it down she had grabbed it and trundled it to her door.  She drags it inside and pushes it into the bedroom, shuts that door, leads him down the passage into a kitchen, snapping on lights as she goes; pulls open a cupboard.  “Did you eat yet?”

“Only the tapas at that bar…”

“I need to eat.  Sit down.” She’s unloading jars and cans, a packet of rusks, a bottle of red wine.  The refrigerator gapes white and humming for a moment and a jar of olives appears, a half-full bottle of cornichons, a squeezy tube of mayonnaise.   “Oh, this is chaos.  Okay, looks like tuna salad on crackers, then, sorry about that, not exactly showing off my cooking skills.  Not that I have any really.  Open the wine, would you?”

“Aurora.”  He rips the foil, takes the corkscrew she drops beside him and sets to work; watches her moving about, setting down two tumblers, two plates, a handful of cutlery from a drawer.  “Aurora, you don’t have to feed me.  You don’t have to do anything for me.”

“I can’t eat and have you just sit there.”  She stabs and scissors open the tinned fish, her back is to him but he can hear the metallic tearing sound and then a tinny _biff, biff, scrape, scrape_ as she empties the contents onto a saucer.  “I don’t want you to go, so – eat something with me.  It’s just common hospitality.  This is all such a shock, you know? –“ the tuna is plonked down in the middle of the tiny table, among the other random things, and she pulls out the second chair and sits with a huff of weary breath.  Their knees touch and for a second she startles, he startles, their eyes meet.  A stare that seems longer than it can be, and she relaxes and does not move away.  “Here –“ the glasses.  He pours, carefully.  He’s determined his hands will not quiver though his heart is still pounding from that moment of contact.  In front of him Aurora is looking at her plate, piling tuna chunks and mayonnaise and olives onto a cracker.  “My god, I’m so hungry.”  She bites, chews.  Licks mayonnaise off her thumb.  Looks at him thoughtfully.  “You’re very quiet.”

“I don’t know what to say.”  He’s watching her mouth, the creases at the corners, the twitch of a smile beginning and hiding again.

“You can go if you like.  I won’t keep you if you don’t want to be here.”

“I want to be here.  If you want me to.”

A slow, tired smile this time, that does not conceal itself.  “I do.  I know, I know, it’s –“ another bite, the second half of the cracker, and she’s chewing that and preparing a second one; shrugging her shoulders, swallowing, taking a swig of wine.  “Help yourself, have something, please – it’s all very strange, I don’t usually want this, you know, the talking part, the learning-who-you-are part, but – this is different, you know? –“

“Yes.”  It is so, so different, so unlike anything from ever before.  Unknown territory; a small kitchen table, a seat facing a woman with quiet eyes and a mouth that was made to smile and has begun, again, to do so, after who knows how long without; a tumblerful of rioja and a place set for him, his feet next to hers on the bare linoleum.  A kind of intimacy he’s never known, simpler even than sex.  “I know guys like me always say ‘she’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before’ but - you’re not.”  Just saying that feels almost too much, and he looks down at the table-top quickly, at the silverware beside his plate, the condensation beading on the cold glass of the jars.  “Perhaps a gherkin.  Or an olive or two.”

There’s a fork in the pickle jar and he manages to spear a cornichon, but the olives float away in their oily brine, bobbing out of reach each time he tries to scoop one up on the tines.  How not to look competent in front of a girl, he thinks, and starts to grin; because why try to seem anything in front of Aurora, who’s seen him already at his best and worst?  He can’t help a ghost of a chuckle and when he looks up she’s watching him and smiling faintly. 

“That night,” she says, and he knows which night – “When you came in, the way you looked at me.  As if you saw me; not a job, _me_.  And then – it was – well, you know what it was…” He knows, and somehow her delicacy in saying only that is more moving than any frankness could be; for a moment he can’t speak, has to put down the olive jar before it slips from his grip.  “And then in the cantina, when you said you’d imagined things with me, and I –“

Her face is so open, he wants to cry and hold her.  How has he ever merited this trust, how can he ever merit it now?  “This,” she says, gesturing, at him, at the table “this is the kind of thing I imagined and I’d never –“ she breaks off again. 

“Yes.  Yes.  It just never seemed very probable, that there’d ever be someone who might want - and then –“

“Yes.”   

He doesn’t really want the cornichon; he offers it to her and she pops it on top of her third cracker and crunches the lot down before speaking again.  The word _Yes_ hangs in the air, waiting on their eyes, their hands.

“I’ve been sitting on that plane, all that way, twelve hours from Mexico City and another hour to get here from Madrid, all that time trying not to keep thinking of you.  I just wanted to _know_ , and it was so hard to accept that I never would.  If you'd survived, if you were okay.  Trying to discipline myself to live with that.  And then, to come up the street and see you there – you, here, three hundred metres from my home! – alive, looking at me, my God, your eyes, Gabriel, you looked up at me like that when you were dying and now suddenly…  It still feels like a dream.  I’m afraid I’ll wake up and it will be one.” 

“So am I.”

“Well.  Well, let me clear these things away anyway, I —“ Aurora stands and starts gathering the food together, pushing things back into the refrigerator hastily.  She picks up the two plates, the used and the unused, and stacks them together.  Seems to avoid his hand when he reaches out.

“Aurora.  Aurora, are you afraid of me?” She doesn’t answer, she’s turning away, to drop the plates in the sink with a rattle.  He rises from his seat.  “I am.  I’m afraid of you.  Of this.  I don’t know how to be a man who – but I want to –“

He sees her shoulders lift and fall as she takes and releases a single deep breath before turning round.  “I am afraid,” she says.  “I think I was never afraid of anything in my life except losing Ana.  I don’t know how to do this either.  But – I went all that way.  You came all this way.  We need to…” A shrug.  “I never wanted to try anything like this, before.  It’s not safe.  I never wanted not to be safe.  Physical risk is one thing, physical risk I can _win_ with, but _this_ – so I stay cynical, armoured, you know, that’s safe.”

“I know.”

He hesitates, watching her and waiting, still expecting a sign that she wants him to come no closer.  Their eyes meeting across the kitchen.  She doesn’t move.  He takes a single step towards her, and another, his feet almost dragging, and hesitates again, till she reaches out with one hand and then takes a step as well; her one step, him two, it’s like a dance, now her two steps, him one; and they are standing in the middle of the room under the domed electric light in the ceiling.  The downward light casts a soft shawl of shadow from her hair over her throat, her shoulders, there’s a gleam on the skin in the wide neck of her blouse. 

She places the forefinger of her right hand on his shirt, hooking him by one button, drawing him that last step closer, into her arms.

He isn’t sure if the thundering in his chest is her heart or his own.  She’s so warm against him, her breath on his neck, her breast pressed against his.  One hand comes to rest over the nape of his neck, the other tight across his back.  He feels as shy as he’s done ever since childhood, and as glad.   

He holds her, and is held.

Slowly Aurora’s breathing grows softer.   Her head resting on his shoulder is pressing down heavily.  She gives a little start suddenly and makes a muffled, amused sound in the back of her throat.  “I’m falling asleep.  I’m sorry.  My time zones are all scrambled, I can’t sleep on planes.  What time is it?”

“Nine pm.”

“What a joke.  I need to go to bed.” 

“Let me let myself out.”

“No, I do have some good manners.”  As she walks him back up the corridor to the entrance they have their arms round one another’s waists, as if keeping in contact physically will stave off both her weariness and his departure.  At the door she undoes the locks and opens it, embraces him again; murmurs “No…” into his neck.

“No?”

“I can’t let you go like this, without –“ they are so nearly of a height that she barely has to tilt her head at all.  Her kiss is soft, almost chaste.  There’s fire inside him again and a sensation like birds’ wings beating, he presses into the kiss for a long moment, letting go completely, stroking her hair, her slim waist, feeling her wiry arms tighten round him, her mouth opening on his, the terrifying unutterable sweetness of this intimacy.

They’re swaying.  She’s swaying.  He breaks off the kiss reluctantly.  “You need to sleep.”

“Yes, I do.”  A wry smile.  “Goodnight, Gabriel.”

“May I – may I see you again?”

“Yes.  Please, yes; you must, we – we must –“

“Yes.  Tomorrow?”

“Better make it quite late tomorrow,” she says, almost laughing.  “I might need to sleep in.”  He has to laugh too; at the sight of her so close to him, her lips that have just been pressed to his, her tired beautiful face, the knowledge that they are saying this; _tomorrow, goodnight, yes, yes_ …

“Until tomorrow, then?”

“Until tomorrow.”


	5. Chapter 5

The city is humming in the morning sunlight, alive with traffic noise from a street over and the airborne applause of wings as the pigeons fly round the Plaza.  Gabriel drinks coffee on his balcony and watches the birds and the tourists, the gleam on the rooftops.  He’d thought he would hardly sleep at all when he got back to the hotel last night; and he has slept like a baby in a folktale, like an innocent cradled in blossoms. 

Let everything begin from today, a new life, a new light.  Summer in Granada and his freedom to choose.  He chooses the unknown, the future, the desperate chance that has repaid trust; chooses Aurora, prays she will choose him. 

Fresh white rolls topped with poppy-seeds, that spring off the crust as he breaks his bread and bounce on the tiles below.  Comical little pats of butter in foil, dark golden jam in a red and blue dish, fresh orange juice and perfect strong coffee, enough in the pot for three cups. 

A trembling inner voice tries to find doubts for him; will she still want to see him today? - should he have given her his number, or asked for hers?  He’s never known if she kept that scrap of paper he gave her or threw it away.  He still has the phone, so maybe she already has his number; but she’s never called it, so perhaps she hasn’t…

He refills the coffee cup and lifts it.  He won’t let himself hear the voice inside, won’t go wrong again.  At the moment everything feels unfixed, unready, the road under his soles slippery as ice; but he will take the next step forward in faith that he won’t fall, that this is the chance where life can be good.  He’ll find a new path.  She will see him again, she will embrace him, they will not be alone. 

And maybe in time they can share other moments as small, as nonsensically intimate, as that scrappy meal of crackers and cornichons last night was; as this breakfast would be, if it were shared.

For a moment he wonders about buying groceries for her, going to the apartment, surprising her with a whole kitchen-worth of bread fresh from the bakery, produce from the market, cheese and cream, _embutidos_ and olives and wine, cake, coffee, delicacies and delights.  Another picnic meal to share, his treat this time; and he could take her out into the countryside in his hire car, they could find somewhere shady and peaceful, sit together, spread a blanket on the ground under a tree, it would be like a holiday… 

He suddenly sees again the look he’d imagined on her face when all his doubts were clamouring at their loudest; the frozen eyes, the turning away.  He could still invite that, the ice, the instant end, he could bring it on himself so easily, if he overstepped his place.  No spontaneous rushing in with bags of food and his own ideas, then.  No trying to rule the day.

It’s only a few seconds’ disappointment.  The whole idea was foolish anyway.  And he’ll see her again, so soon now.  Each time he thinks of it a grin spreads across his face like light across water. 

He manages to stretch his impatience with coffee and strolling; remembering the tourists last night, and Aurora’s amused account of visiting the Zocalo, he queues and pays to go inside the Capilla Real and look over the tombs of the Catholic Monarchs and their family.  It fills half an hour pleasantly enough; there are paintings he supposes must be fine, and a gilded retablo impressive for its size alone.  He wonders if the alabaster statues are good likenesses or not; the wreaths of carved flowers are numbingly realistic but the royal faces look blandly idealised.  So was the great Isabella, the shaper of history without whose patronage Colón might never have set out, really this doughy-faced woman?  He would have expected an expression with more bite, even anger; a more Spanish face and a less Catholic one. 

It pleases him childishly that the dead princess Juana the Crazy looks a lot more characterful than her mother.

It’s almost eleven and he’s making his way down the Calle Alcaicería, looking in shop windows, fighting the temptation to buy idiotic touristic gifts.  He doesn’t need a new belt buckle, or a tie pin shaped like a Saracen’s scimitar, and he’s quite sure Aurora doesn’t need a miniature alarm clock mounted in the body of a model astrolabe.  He should probably take it as a sign of slight mania that he’s even considering such things.  If she wants anything from him he must let her tell him, lead him to it, be his guide.

It’s ten past eleven and he’s crossing the Plaza Bib-Rambla and turning down the street that leads through the market, towards Aurora’s corner.  It’s quarter past, and he finally gives way to this imp inside urging him to shop like an excitable teenager, and buys a kilo of strawberries from one of the greengrocers’ stalls.

And it’s twenty past; he’s standing at the street door, between the mobile phone store and the wedding dress shop, pressing the bell for apartment 1A-right: Rodriguez, A. 

She picks up the door-phone almost instantly.  “Who’s there?”

“Hello.”

“Hello…”  The entry signal buzzes and he pushes the ironwork bars over the door and enters the cool shade of the hallway.  When he reaches the top of the stairs and turns to her door it’s open already and she’s leaning on the frame, watching for him.  Jeans, bare feet, a sleeveless cotton top the colour of mandarins.  Her hair around her shoulders as always; and what a jolt it is, like magic in his veins, thinking “as always” as he looks at her again. 

He’s wearing black, and a white shirt.  As always.  Does she think the same, looking at him?  It could be true, one day.  There could be an always, for him, for them, somewhere.

They stand looking at one another in mutual surprise, smiling for a moment, before he comes the rest of the way.

“Strawberries,” he says, offering the brown paper bag.

He has a second of pure doubt as she looks expressionlessly at him, before suddenly she smiles and repeats “Strawberries?  You bought? –“

“Do you like strawberries?”

“Yes.  I do, yes.”  She looks pleased, and almost confused at being pleased; it’s a sight so unexpected he struggles to place it for a moment.  An openness in her strength, where he’s only seen the beauty and goodness of a warrior goddess.  Shaken and moved, he holds the bag out again, and she takes it, inhaling and smiling, her eyes fluttering shut for a second. “Ah, they’re beauties, they’re so ripe!”

She leaves the door open for him.  He assumes, hopes, has to hope, it’s for him; hesitates still before following into the passage and closing the front door.  Aurora is standing at the sink when he reaches the kitchen; rinsing the fruit under the tap and piling it into a dish.  She turns and stands facing him, holding it like an offering; and is suddenly strange, and shy, her eyes dipping away and back to his slowly.

He wants her so much he knows he’ll never have enough words, enough courage.  He crosses the room slowly; like their near-contra-dance last night, she takes a step for each of his, so that they meet next to the table; and he takes a strawberry, because he cannot think, and so must act, somehow. 

Her grip shifts as she moves the dish into her left hand and with her right she stops him, lifts the single fruit from his fingers. 

The clear bright glass between them is red and full, stained with berries and juice.  It looks like a dish of rubies, or some sacrifice out of the history books, but their two hands meeting and holding a berry between them are neither greedy nor sacrificial but gentle, frailly tender with one another.  She hesitates, moves as if to eat the fruit and then stops, and lifts it to his lips instead.  He takes a bite; tastes a sweetness, an intense perfumed flavour that is sharp and honeyed in one.  He’s eating, his eyes on hers, as she bites the other half of the berry and half grins, chewing and throwing the hull down onto the floor.  Her lips move, the tip of her tongue showing for an instant.  He licks his own lips in response.  The strawberry juice is heady as a drug in his mouth, in his blood.

Without breaking eye contact Aurora puts the dish down on the table roughly; the glass bumps onto the Formica surface with a rattle but before he can even glance towards it she has both her hands on his face, hands that are still cool and wet from washing the fruit.  Her fingertips slide into his hair as she draws him closer.  She says his name softly, almost hoarsely, her breath beginning to come short, and she’s caressing his cheeks, running one thumb across the corner of his mouth, the end of his moustache. 

No-one ever touches you when they are afraid of you, he knows that bitterly and well; and she told him yesterday she was afraid, but she touches him, she touches him and her touch goes deep.  He closes his eyes and turns his face into her palm, presses his lips to her skin.  His own breathing has gone quick and shallow as though he’s already near-expiring in her arms.  He leans in to her, panting, touching her, placing his hands on her, feeling her warmth through the cool softness of cotton.

She puts one arm round his shoulders, pulling him closer.  They are so nearly of a height that it takes only the smallest movement more and she is pressed against him, the length of his body crushing onto hers, arms gripping, clinging, their mouths locking together inseparably.  From breathing like a gale suddenly he’s almost unable to breathe at all; he’s all lips and stillness, there’s no thought in him and no future.  His whole being concentrated into a long kiss like death, and the taste of strawberries in Aurora’s mouth.  When he inhales again it feels like crying out, and he’s dizzy with pleasure already. 

Their lips part, and she makes a tiny sound in her throat, muted and full of longing.  Draws him closer, whispering his name again faintly; and they fall into another kiss.  Her thighs are pressed on his, her breasts, her belly, he feels her tilt her hips forward and he responds, rocking his pelvis against her, shivering and glorying in the pressure, the momentary suggestion of rhythm. 

She moves, shifting her feet, spinning him very slowly round, and herself round him, it’s like another dance step, with her leading first and then him and then neither one; turning and moving together, stepping lightly, weightless as leaves.  Back across the kitchen, into the doorway, a shuffling kissing waltz so strange and yet so natural that he’s smiling into her mouth and she’s breaking off the kiss for a moment to laugh under her breath.  Her whole face is one incredulous smile. 

He remembers how she looked up from her hotel bed and undressed him with her eyes, how he stripped like a man mesmerised and knelt before her, lost in some telepathic certainty as she rose and wrapped her arms round him and pulled him onto the crumpled sheets…

There are two more doors in the passage besides the closed one; he glimpses a bathroom, and then they are moving through the other, into a large corner room with windows on two sides.  There’s a couch facing the door, a long one, big enough for four, with an ugly beige cover and a yellow fleecy throw scattered with cushions.  They turn towards it, still almost dancing, he can’t begin to think which of them first moves down but they are sinking onto the couch together and for a moment their bodies part.  Aurora’s hands move to his shirt and she begins to undo the buttons one by one.  He darts in for another quick kiss, she turns her head into it, lips parting on his, hands coaxing inside his shirt and pulling it from his torso, stroking slowly along his bare ribs. 

He’s gasping with excitement, already hard and wild for her, but suddenly she pulls away from him.  He sees that her face is sad and shaken. 

“Gabriel.  You’re so thin.  And –“

She’s seen the scar.  It’s hideous, he knows that it is; it slices across his side, just beneath the lowest rib, a sore red-and-white line, shiny and alien as spilled paint against his tan.

“Oh, Gabriel…”

He takes her hand, lays it over the puckered, strange skin.  “I’m well.  I’m okay.  I’m healed.  You saved me, remember?  You saved me.”

“It’s so wide.  I can’t even cover it with my whole hand.”

“But you saved me.  I’m well.  It doesn’t hurt anymore.  I swear to you.”

“Life is so fragile,” Aurora says.  Her voice aches.  “Too fragile.  Gabriel, Gabriel, I can’t bear it, not you as well…”

“I’m alive.  I’m well.  Please don’t fear for me.  You saved me.”

He cannot bear to hear her say such things; he folds both arms round her and clings to her and she clutches him.  “Should we – should we be doing this?” she asks, a soft whisper in his ear.

“Aurora, do you want me?  I can go if –“

“I want you.”  Her voice goes fierce and certain and next second she rears back in his arms, staring at him.  “I want you but I cannot bear it if I hurt you.”

“Please, you cannot hurt me, I am well, I am strong now…” He isn’t sure how well he’s explaining himself.  The pain in her face has to be for more than him.  It isn’t an easy thing to say but he takes a quick breath and adds “I’m – functional, everything’s functional” and sees her expression shade from naked vulnerable emotion into an amazed, embarrassed amusement.  “Everything,” he repeats.  The relief and comedy of it is delicious, making her smile, helping her come back from that moment of grief.  He could have unmanned himself utterly if she’d taken that as awkwardly as he felt in saying it; but she’s smiling, she’s leaning into his body again, and her lips ghost along the side of his throat.

He slides a hand inside her blouse, stroking up the skin of her back slowly.  His own skin turning to fire as he realises she’s naked under the pale orange cotton.  Aurora shivers, arches back, reaches down to pull the blouse off over her head.  Her firm high breasts press against him as she puts her arms round his neck again.

“I’ve seen too many people get hurt,” she whispers.  “Too much hurt, too much lost.  I will not lose you.”

“No.  You won’t lose me.”

“I will see you live.”  Another long, gentle kiss, her hands caressing him, fingers spreading out over his shoulders.  “I will see you well.  I will see you smile.”

“Yes…. Yes…”

She gets one knee onto the couch beside him and kneels up, releasing him quickly to unfasten her jeans and haul them and her underwear off.  When she moves again it is to straddle him, still kneeling, her hands in his hair now.  His lips are quivering; he throws himself against her body, blinding his sight before he can be burned, crushing his mouth on her bosom, pressing his heaving ribs against her belly.  Clings, as she clings to him, whimpering with need and the ecstasy of nearness.  She’s all strength and tenderness, he wants to worship her, lose himself in her, be possessed by the body he possesses. 

Her hands slide down to his waist, feeling their way round to the heavy buckle of his belt.

“Yes…” he murmurs, drawing back, letting her in.   Feels her hands work his fly down, gentle and commanding at once.  Moans.  “My God, yes!”

He nuzzles her body; tender flesh, taut skin.  Gets his mouth on a soft breast, a hard nipple.  His head is spinning.  She works his pants off him quickly, narrow strong hands urgent on him, pulling his shorts down.  As he struggles to free himself from the fabric, from the shoes that seem to be locked on his feet, she’s taking hold of him, stroking his length with one hand, gripping the tension of his ass with the other.  Her voice says breathlessly “Yes, yes, Gabriel, yes…”

He pulls her down beside him, lying full length, pressed to one another everywhere they can be. 

The couch is barely wide enough for them to lie on it together but they work their way with wriggles and shifts and accommodations into a position where there’s room.  The soft throw subsides down the back and vanishes and cushions fall off at the foot as Aurora kicks them away; and for a breathless moment she’s almost giggling.  She drags his legs between her own.  He kisses up her body, tasting perspiration on her like the breath of the sea; her bosom, her collar bone, her shoulder, neck, jawline; the spot under the corner of her jaw, where her pulse is rapid against his mouth and he can press like a bee into the gold of a flower, tasting her, binding himself to her life.  His hardness is caught between their bodies and he groans with pleasure.  She’s tilting and rocking against him; then with a little clumsy scrabble she hitches herself back into the cushions and tips him over so that he’s lying above her.

“Oh yes…” She’s guiding him, coaxing him, he can feel the warm wet heat of her now and he shifts his weight and lets himself be guided, be coaxed, be taken slowly into her body.

It isn’t the same as before, it cannot be, because they’re prone and facing one another and somehow this is the one thing he’s never dreamed of, that he would be looking down into her eyes and not at her shoulder and her wild hair falling across it.  But he’s held as no-one else has ever held him, rocking into her, gasping voicelessly.  It’s impossible to hide.  Her face a few centimetres from his, her eyes as stunned and naked as his own, lips parting to pant and form weak inarticulate sounds of astonishment and ecstasy.  It is, she is, terrifying and magical; how can this ordinary bodily act, his cock in her body, her flesh holding him, feel so perfect, as though not bodies but spirits were meeting here?  How can something so intimate, so utterly vulnerable, somehow feel also like being safer and more cherished, more protected, than he has ever been in all his life?

Even than that first time.  The realisation then, that the pleasure exploding in him was so much more, so hugely more than anything he’d known, it had crept on him from nowhere and broken him open.  Now he knows it can happen; it would be all too possible for nothing ever to be the same, but such fears are false, brittle as cobwebs, because he’s falling into the safety of her eyes and her mouth, he’s naked inside her and nothing can harm him again.  They breathe in one another’s mouths, heat shared and inflamed, they are burning one another and moaning, crying, whispering faint words of shock, murmurs of _yes_ and _yes_ and their voices intertwining as he slides into her and she rolls her hips, thrusting against him.  As he works one hand between their bodies, fingertips probing and pressing, as she closes both hands over his ass and draws him in, and in, and in…

He keeps beginning to close his eyes and then forcing them open again.  He cannot withstand the beauty of her, holding him and he cannot bear to be separated from her in the smallest degree.  It feels so close to death that he is fighting tears now.  They make love with astonished eyes locked together, frantic desperate gasps of release shaking the air between them; and he sees her eyes turn darker, her skin pale, her breath faint and fast, she moans in fragments of sound while her muscles clench and cling, quivering round him so that he whimpers, shudders, buries himself in her.  Sharp jagged exhalations, like the moment after the first shock when the real pain hits home; his breath hot, fearful, punching out of him in time to the spasms of coming.  Everything is blank for a moment, and shattered, all strength gone from him so that he crumbles and falls into the welcome, the blessing of her arms cradling him again.  Safe, and spent, held safe in her exhaustion; and she safe in him. 

Never, never, never, there cannot be another after this.  This is what it is meant to be.  This is paradise, death, hope, this is union and communion.  He’s panting like a marathon runner and crying into her bare shoulder as she holds him tight and does not let go. 

He’s still breathing.  Undeserving, but saved, and alive.  The smell of sex and the smell of her, and the sweat cooling on his naked skin.  He’s still breathing, with Aurora.  There can never be another.


	6. Chapter 6

Gabriel’s panting eases slowly. 

Every limb feels leaden and soft with release.  Aurora is holding him cradled on her breast.  One hand caresses his hair, slow, rhythmic.  He could lie here forever, he knows.  He’ll never want to be anywhere else.   But that’s not possible.  It’s midday and they are alive and blessed to be so.  There is half a day ahead, before the night might bring them together again.

He makes himself shift his weight sleepily; yawns, fights through the daze of pleasure and raises his head.  He’s still awed by the power of this thing between them, this bond like something out of a folktale.  Has no idea how he’ll ever find words adequate to express it.

The look in her eyes tells him she feels it too, and that she too is shaken.  But the blinding intensity has begun to grow calm at last, and the dizziness to settle. 

He kisses her reverently.

It’s a kind of madness, as though their veins, their pulses, are fed from the same heart.  Perhaps he is insane, but he cannot lose this, cannot step away.

Aurora sweeps her hand across his forehead, stroking his hair back gently.  Her palm is hot and he can feel that she’s trembling slightly.  She looks lost, her face almost sad.  There’s a shine of moisture in her lashes; and the wetness of his tears is still on her skin, where just now he lay crying in joy and shock as the blaze of orgasm burned out and released him.  She lifts her lips to him, her mouth open, seeking his; her dark eyes slip closed as they kiss again.  Her breath quickens, as does his, they are together in every moment, and in this also.

It isn’t possible, and it’s happening; he has no words, and wants to give her every word he’s ever possessed, every prayer, bound together in a song.  But all he has is silence and breath.

The long kiss breaks off at last, uncertain, hesitating on the cusp of another, and Gabriel moves again, trying to take his weight from her a little; and then suddenly he’s right on the edge of the couch and overbalancing, about to fall.  He throws one arm up to save himself and grabs the backrest with an undignified “Ay!”, and Aurora laughs.

It wasn’t planned.  He almost did fall; he’s hanging on and squirming to redistribute his body weight without crushing her and she is hugging him and laughing, and saying “Ah, take  care, take care, dear one –“

\- “I nearly fell off! –“ he’s laughing too –

\- “Don’t fall off! –“ her face is pure happiness, astounded and bright like spring.

“Ah, Aurora…”

He manages to pull himself closer and nuzzles into her neck again, his lips to her pulse, her body vibrating with silent laughter against his.  Says her name, softly, into her skin.  “Aurora, dearest, sweet –“ but it’s no good, he wants to pour out poetry and prayers upon her but he’s only keeping his balance now by holding on tight to the sofa-back.  He braces his weight on one elbow and levers himself up carefully.  “It’s no good, I’m sorry, I do have to move or I’m going to roll right off on the floor…”

She sits up too.  Still smiling; one hand stroking his hair, his forehead, his cheek.  “It’s okay.  It’s okay.”

He looks at her, naked and utterly herself, hair in Medusa-locks, mouth flushed from kisses; entirely extraordinary, in this most ordinary place, here in her own home. 

He’s in her home.  He can’t help looking.  This is her world.

It’s a very nondescript room.  Almost as much as her hotel room was, the first time.  There’s a drop-leaf table, a balcony outside the windows; shelves lining the other wall are lined with books and dvd cases, and a small TV, with three ugly unlikely glass ornaments on the top shelf.  In front of the books is a row of tiny plastic trinkets he recognises as the toys out of Kinder eggs.  Perhaps they can always be lovers now, in this everyday world.  There’s a cheap space heater under the table and half a dozen cushions scattered across the floor.  Along with their clothes. 

He looks down at himself; he has one sock still on.  He can dimly remember kicking his shoes off.  When his eyes meet hers again he’s grinning sheepishly. 

“My bed is full of unpacking,” Aurora says apologetically.  She’s sitting beside him now; she nudges his thigh with her own and she’s smiling back at him, sidelong, rueful.  “A whole suitcase-full of dirty clothes.  I couldn’t’ve taken you in there…”

It’s comical to feel so happy, and so completely at peace, in such a hopeless position of vulnerability.  He’s utterly helpless, and he has no idea when he was so free.  If he ever was.

Nonetheless; he picks up his shorts and suit pants and stands up to pull them on again quickly.  When he looks up at Aurora she’s doing the same; she has her panties on again and is just shrugging the cotton top back over her head.  It settles as she smooths the fabric.  It’s just long enough to half-cover her ass, like an immensely curtailed mini-dress.  Those tanned bare legs are his, have gripped and held and owned him.  An appreciative smile hijacks his lips and without thinking he opens his arms.

She takes two quick strides and embraces him.  He sinks his head on her shoulder, smelling the herbal perfume on her hair and the salt-sour musk of her perspiration.  Holds her again, and is held, remembering how seldom anyone has done this.  Seldom? - never, until now.  These cascading shivers of pleasure, this unity, as though they are joined at some level deep below the skin…

Her hands are spread out across his back.  Such warmth; and he’s touching her with every inch of himself, pressing her as close as he can.  Her breath on his neck is slow and steady now.

She rubs one thumb across his spine gently.  “Ah, you are too thin.  You need to eat better.”

“Hospital food,” he says.  “I lost a few kilos…”

“You weren’t fat to begin with.”

“We-ell - I was getting a bit of a – a little bit of a Michelin –“

“Pff,” says Aurora, sweetly scornful.  “At least call it a curve of happiness.”

“But it was a curve of junk food and not enough exercise,” he tells her shyly.

“Well, here in Granada I promise you good food and lots of exercise.”

There’s a note in her voice that is almost mischievous.  He leans back to look at her, uncertain and delighted.  “Aurora!”

For a second she’s grinning, beautiful and wicked in her happiness; then she lays a hand to his cheek.  “But tell me if I – if I overdo it.  Not with sex! – or, well, that too, but - I mean, if I - mother you too much.  I used to mother Ana and I know she resented it sometimes.  Tell me?  Stop me if I do?”

“No-one has done that in so long…”  He leans into her touch.  The warm hands are no longer trembling but strong, holding him, all loving concern.  “No-one takes care of me, and why should they? –“ He breaks off, horrified to hear the self-pitying words coming out.  “It’s not as if –“ He can’t finish.  Shuts his eyes in shame.

“Ah, but I want to.  And it isn’t fair, you are a man with your own choices to make.  Don’t let me?  You’re not a child, you’re not mine to guide –“

“But I am.  I am yours.”

“No.”  She’s shaking her head, her voice rapidly becoming vehement.  “No, you’re not.  You mustn’t be.  Please don’t say that.”

“My life is yours.”

“Please don’t.  Your life is your own.”

It has never been his own, the very idea is strange, another almost magical thought, and he’s starting to shake his head, in wonder as much as denial.  

“You don’t belong to anyone anymore,” Aurora says heatedly “not to that fucker Félix, not to anyone.  Not to me.  Please, live for yourself.  I’m not good enough to live for.  Live for you!” 

“Ah!  No, don’t say that!  Not good enough to -?  No, please!”  They are staring at one another, eyes shocked and sudden.  He knows what she is trying to tell him but she cannot have meant _that_ \- “I’ll try, I will try, I – I understand what you’re trying to say to me, I will try, I promise, but - you mustn’t say you’re not good enough to – Aurora, no!  You are good!”

She shakes her head at him. “I’m an ex-con and a thief, I’ve turned tricks, I’m a bitch; believe me I can be the biggest bitch you’ve ever – I moved to a new town, wanted to make a new start for _good reasons_ , Gabriel, not for some pretty whim!”

“And I’m the same.  I’m worse.  I’m a murderer.”  The word is like a choking lump inside his throat for a second.  It’s true, and it always will be.  “There, I said it.  I’m a murderer.  You’re not the only one with a reason to want to begin again…”

Her face is stricken, and he can feel how his own expression has fallen.  From the heights of intimacy to the depths of pain in a few words.  He’s done this to her, made his warrior look like this, as though she’s wounded and bleeding; and they are wounding one another and he does not know why.

_I cannot expect this to be easy.  We have neither of us lived easy lives. I must not shut down…_

“I’m sorry,” he says helplessly.  “I’m sorry, please forgive me.”

She closes her eyes; and then just as his heart is sinking into his cold belly she leans in and hugs him closely again.  “I’m sorry, too.  Oh, Gabriel, we mustn’t do this.  Not this.”

“Mustn’t -?”

“Hurt one another like this.  I’m so sorry!  I do not want to hurt you. I do not believe you want to hurt me –“

\- “I don’t, I don’t –“

“Then we must be careful with one another.  I am – I am very angry – very, very angry – but not with you.  I know it’s not with you.  I need to – _hold_ that anger, I need to learn how to live in it and let it be, not hit out with it, accept it and live round it and through it – and –“

“And so do I.” he finishes humbly.  “I need to learn that and so much more.  My God, so much.  And I don’t know how.  But I will try.”

“Okay.  Okay.  We can do this.  I know, such a cliché!  But I believe we can.”

“I don’t know how,” he says again.

“Nor do I,” she whispers. “So we find out.  We try, like you said.  We try, and we find out by trying.  Like – like trying to make fire.”

“I think we make fire already.”

Aurora chuckles, beginning to regain the armour of her smile.  “You know what I mean.  We need to experiment, rubbing sticks and striking flints and – whatever else people do –“

“Playing with cigarette lighters,” he suggests.  It’s good to make her smile again after that horrible moment. 

She rumples his hair softly.  “I’m going to get the strawberries.”

He watches her walk from the room.  Her bare legs and feet are beautiful; it’s like seeing an Amazon go by.  Waiting, he picks up the cushions to stack them back on the couch again, and retrieves his shirt from the floor, shaking it and turning the sleeves right-side-out again; picks up her jeans next and does the same to them.  They simply threw one another’s clothes to the floor.  He will pick them up, and pull the fleece cover up again and shake that and spread it, and he will be sitting there looking up when she comes back in carrying the dish of blood-red strawberries before her.

“Are you doing anything tomorrow?” he calls through to the kitchen.

“Monday, right?  No, I have the day free.  My course is Tuesdays to Fridays, though.  So after tomorrow I have to get back to my studies, though I’m free in the evenings.”

“Then may I take you out somewhere, tomorrow?  With a  - with a picnic.  Somewhere we can sit and talk, somewhere quiet?”  She appears in the doorway, she’s smiling and he thinks _I’m going to say it, because we do have to talk and not shut down, we do have to learn how to do this, how to make this fire, one struck flint at a time_.  “A date,” he says. “A proper date.  We haven’t had a date.  I want to do this properly, I want to have a date with you.”

“We still have the whole of today, as well.”  Aurora holds out the fruit.  “Stay with me, talk to me.  Eat with me.  Please?  I want to be with you.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Today and tomorrow.”

_And longer_ , he thinks, _please God._


	7. Chapter 7

In the end, the first picnic isn’t in the countryside but on a bench on the Paseo de los Tristes, beside the narrow gorge of the Darro.  The noon sunlight pours down on the plaza, glancing on polished café tables and glaring off the marble paving and the renaissance facades above.  Coaches pull in and park, here at the foot of Sacromonte; they disgorge tourists who stare up at the walls of the Alhambra on their hillside across the river, then stand waving camera phones until their guides rally them and they trudge off uphill, heading for the next mark on the sightseeing map. 

Gabriel and Aurora are not here to sightsee.  They find a bench in the shade of a plane tree and spread out their shopping.

It’s almost his dream picnic, and he’s aware of being proud of himself for suggesting it.  They’ve bought themselves crusty _bocadillos de tortilla_ , and slices of empanada, and a bag of brittle white meringues studded with gems of crystalized fruit.  A couple of bottles of water and a couple more of beer, and he wants for nothing more save for the day to remain as happy as this.  Calm, sunlit, new like something freshly-made.

They talk quite idly.  He isn’t quite sure yet how to judge when they are shying around topics and when they are relaxing into not needing to say things; there’s an odd vague area between the two, not yet familiar enough to ignore.  But they do want to be together, of that he is sure; they both are; and she has said twice now that they must be careful with one another.  It isn’t just him that feels the fragility of this cord joining them, and its tenderness, and its preciousness. 

He knows he can’t expect everything to arrive and be set perfect, all at once and ready to go, like the start of a book or the end of a film.  There’s no single answer, no revelatory moment when all will be made well.  There’s just time to spend talking, asking and answering the idle questions that occur to them in turn; eating the omelette sandwiches, the tuna and olive pie, drinking cold beer from the brown glass bottles. 

They take turns to ask one another things, in the hope that random questions can simplify this odd game, this getting to know someone.  By agreement, he gets to ask the first one.  He can’t come up with anything, now he has to speak, and laughs at himself before finding the most unoriginal words.

“Your favourite colour?”

“I’m not sure, green, maybe?  Green or blue.  Or sea-blue, like, a greeny-blue, yeah.  What’s yours?”

He thinks of the heady fiery sea off Algeciras.  “Blue.”

“My turn.  Do you play any sports?  Do you watch any?”

“Football, not much else; and I enjoy the corrida; you?”

“None of it, really; I don’t count the self-defence classes as a sport.  I like dancing, though; I did Sevillanas classes when I was a kid, it was kind of addictive but I wasn’t much good.”

“I noticed you’re right-handed…”

“Yes, and so are you!”

“Did you like school?” His next question has her laughing out loud and throwing up her hands without an answer, and he begins to laugh too, saying “Yeah, me neither!” and then as she goes on laughing he comes back with another question, out of his turn:

“What’s your favourite fruit?” and Aurora laughs more. 

“Well, it’s funny you should ask, guess what, strawberries!”  Their eyes meet on that and the amusement stills slowly into fire, and they are both breathless for a moment.  She blinks and says quickly “Do you like to travel?  Where would you go if you could have a holiday anywhere at all, anywhere in the world, right now?”

“I’d be here.  Don’t forget, this is a holiday for me; it’s the first time I’ve been in Europe when it’s not for work, anyway…”

He watches her put one of the little white meringues between her lips and bite into it.  It collapses in a powdery snowstorm, and she splutters and starts to laugh.  She covers her mouth self-consciously, trying to wipe it off, but he draws her hand away and leans in to kiss the sugar from her face.  When he starts licking his own lips she laughs more.

His heart clenches and unclenches like someone clutching at a treasure they cannot hold, seeing her strong face break open again and again in these moments of bashful, honest happiness. 

“When I said just now, this is a holiday –“ he says, and hesitates.

“Yes?” says Aurora, licking her sugared fingers like a cat licking its paw. 

“The thing is – I don’t want to – be pushy, to impose, but – I don’t have to go back.  If I can find a new life, I will go where that takes me.  Maybe it will take me home, or maybe home will be somewhere new.  Maybe I need to make a really big break.  I do have a lot to leave behind.”

“But there must be things to make you – to make you want to go home, surely?”

He thinks for a moment, because this is not a question to be answered with the spirit of impulsiveness.  But “No, not really.  Almost none.”

“Almost?”

“My mother’s grave.”

“Ah, but that is a big thing.  A truly big thing to leave.”

“Yes.  Yes, it is.”  He can’t begin to find words to tell her, or even himself, what the thought of that loss feels like.  Says instead “I know you left your sister…” and Aurora’s face goes sad, so that he regrets the words at once.  He reaches out to touch her hand. “I’m sorry, I have no right to speak of –“

“No, you’re right, I did leave her.  She was dead, I didn’t want to risk dying too, I left.  Practical.  Like when I went to jail for her.  It was the practical thing to do.  I – I can be a very cold woman, Gabriel.  A cold, old woman.”

“Old?” His mouth twists into an uncomfortable grin at what surely has to be a joke.  “You’re not old!”

“I’m older than you, I think.”

“Ah?” He isn’t sure how to react to that; her words have the sudden odd flavour of something she’s been looking for a way to raise.

“Do you mind?  Me being older?” Yes, she was looking for a way to tell him this.

Does he mind? 

Is she older?

He’s never even thought about such a thing.  She’s Aurora, powerful and competent and tender, she is the warm strong arms that love him and the shyness he’s beginning to recognise, that speaks because it is shy; she is the courage that stood up and fought back, against everything he’d gone for years without fighting.  Does it matter if she’s a year or two his senior?

“How old are you?” she asks into his momentary silence.

“Twenty-nine.  I’ll be thirty at the end of the year.”

Aurora smiles; her eyes crease at the corners, the mouth he loves to kiss curves into a gentle grin.  “I am older, then, yes.  I was afraid I was.  I’m thirty-six.”

“Oooh…” It’s given him just long enough to think; and these are just numbers.  If she’d said forty-six they would still just be numbers.  “Ooh, you’re so old, Aurora.”

“Pah.” She’s still grinning, but her face is a little more cautious.  He adds quickly “It doesn’t make the smallest bit of difference.  You are the woman you are and that is all that I care about.  I met _you_ ; a person, not a number.  Nothing else matters.” 

There’s a long moment of silence, and he sees her throat work a little as she swallows her hesitancy before saying quietly “Thank you.”

“Truly, it isn’t important.”

“It could have been very important.  For so many men, it would have been.  If – if it had been important for you, it would have had to be for me, also.”

Sunlight in her dark hair.  It’s possible she will grow grey-haired before him.  But it still would have been if she’d been his junior; these things aren’t always predictable.  Maybe this is just the insanity of love, maybe in fact he should care for something that matters so much to most people.  But truly, truly – “All I care about if that you are the person you are.  You walked into my life and made everything change, and made me see that it had to be so.  You saved me when I didn’t know I was lost.  You touched me as no-one has ever done.  Made me want to live, right down into the depths of me.  What is a number, compared to this?”

She takes another meringue and eats it, slowly, then feeds one to him, her fingers brushing his lips. 

“You know, I am almost afraid to talk to you,” she says at length “when I think how much this means, and how little we know one another.  What if we are deceiving ourselves and this all turns to anger and pain?  So many lovers never do anything but cause disaster to one another.  I don’t want that.  For you or myself.  Is it madness to think we can be happy together?”

“All we can do is find out.  You said so yourself.  Please don’t be sad or afraid.  If this cannot last, we’ll know.”

“And you won’t fight it, if that happens?”

“What would be the point in fighting it when that would mean fighting you?” That gets him a grin.  He smiles back and goes on more carefully.  “I’m serious; I know I’d never win.  Aurora, I’m as unsure as you, but this much I’m certain of; you are my equal.  I can’t make you do a single thing if you don’t wish it.  So we have to go together, or not at all.  I’m content to have this chance, on those terms.  It’s far more than I deserve, more than I ever dreamed I could know.”

She lifts her beer bottle and chinks it against his, and they both drink. 

That’s the last of the beer; two empty bottles, pushed into the plastic bag from the bakery.  There’s still water, and there are still a few of the little meringues, but the rest of the food is gone, just crumbs and greasy paper now.  He pushes the rubbish into the bag as well and puts it on the ground at his feet, and shifts along the bench, closer to her.  Their knees brush.  Aurora smiles and wriggles nearer, settles into his side, swinging her feet sideways, relaxing with her back against his chest and her head tucked under his chin.  Gabriel folds both arms round her and holds her close, feeling her wrap her own arms over his.  They sit pressed together with their hands overlapping. 

Such utter peace.  Neither one of them needing to speak.  Only the sparrows speaking, and the tourists, and the sound of music from one of the cafés.  There’s a radio, too, in a high window somewhere, the inevitable football commentary babbling in excitement.  It’s too far off to catch the words and he doesn’t care who’s playing anyway.  He sits in the shade with Aurora, and the shade and sunlight move around them as the afternoon passes.

He’s lost track of time completely when she asks “Have you been to the Alhambra yet?”

“No.”

“Do you want to see it?”

“I suppose so.  It’s pretty famous.”

“Probably too late to get tickets for tomorrow.  Perhaps for next weekend?”

“Okay…”  She’s thinking about next weekend; and that’s a kind of promise in itself.  He kisses the side of her head.  “What shall we do tomorrow, then?”

“You wanted a picnic?”

“Another one?”

“Why not?  Good to eat out of doors when we can.  In another month or so it’ll be too hot for it, and then come winter it’s too cold to eat outside unless you go down to the coast…”

“We could do that, if you’d like.  Go to the coast.  I have a hire car.”

“Swim shorts?”

“I – can get some.”

“Motril, then, or Salobreña.  Or we could go up in the mountains, if you prefer.  The coast will be busy.”

He grins and bends again, to kiss her behind the ear this time.  “I’m from Mexico City, remember?  I don’t mind busy.” 

“The sea it is, then.” 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been a long time coming; apologies for that.  
> Chapter warning for near-death experience - please read with caution if you are a poor swimmer or frightened of drowning.

The sea.  A long drive on a sunny morning, wide roads curving down through the mountains and the coastal hills, passing small towns with shining church towers, and reservoirs like azure, and avenues of stone-pines holding their green umbrellas against the sky.  And there, in the distance and then nearer, and then here, vivid and bright as life and right in front of them, the sea itself.

Aurora’s bathing costume is scarlet.  Of course.  She unbuttons her sundress and steps out of it dressed in flame, shaking her hair down.  She has a blue beach bag with a couple of rolled towels, and she stands holding that in one hand with the sundress trailing in the other, smiling at him.

Gabriel is carrying everything else; the fleece blanket from her couch, the picnic, and his own awkwardness.  He’s been shopping, and his clothes feel new and strange.  It must be several years since he wore jeans.  He bought a tee-shirt with an ornate star-print on the front, too, and canvas tennis shoes, and the swim-shorts he’s wearing under the stiff new denim.  He must look the perfect tourist; the man on the cover of a brochure.  All the scene needs is a row of palm trees instead of the dusty stand of reeds like bamboos at the back of the beach.  The sand is bright gold, dry and crunching underfoot as they walk down to the water; strewn with fruit peels, cigarette butts and small pink and white shells.  When they’ve found a spot to sit and spread out the blanket and the towels, and Aurora bends down to undo her sandals, he tries to undress quickly.  She looks up as he unbuckles his belt and unfastens the fly buttons on the Levis.  He’d hoped to get changed before she finished; childish to feel this way, but these casual alien clothes are not him.  It’s like play-acting another man, and he’s suddenly afraid again that she will see through him and back away.

Instead she says “Wow, Hawaiian print!” and then “I like it.  Very cheerful.”

“All I could find.  It was this or polka dots.”  The board shorts are loud, a vivid deep green patterned with orange and red hibiscus blossom, and they reach almost to his knees.  But the dots would have been worse, an apology for existing in fabric form.  There’s something shameless about the blazing hibiscus.  If only he felt the like confidence; but he can try to fake it.

Nothing for it but to sit down, unlace his shoes, pull off the fluffy new socks.  Sand under his feet and between his toes, fine but gritty, and persistent as memory. 

For a long time they just sit, side by side, watching the waves that break smoothly on the sand, twenty metres away.  The sound is rhythmic, hypnotic, and rich, heavy notes like thunder and fine fading chords.  The cries of gulls overhead, the whistling of small birds in the reed-beds, the voices of other beachgoers coming and going on the breeze, all blend together like a series of descants above the deep music of the sea.

After a while Aurora suddenly chuckles.  He looks round at her in peaceful happiness, feeling sleepy and content as a cat in the sun.  She’s digging in her bag and she produces a bottle of sunscreen.  “We’ll both be scarlet as tomatoes – do my back for me?”

She lies down, scooping her hair back from her shoulders, and it’s too beautiful a sight to leave unworshipped.  Gabriel leans over her, peppers her skin with kisses.  The swimsuit has a plunging back; he runs his lips down her spine, and she shivers and wriggles under him, laughing.  “Please!  Sun lotion?”

“Of course.”  It’s almost as much of a pleasure as kissing her, to stroke the silky liquid onto her skin and slowly, carefully rub it in.  He flips the straps off her shoulders to ensure he doesn’t leave any gaps, then flips them back again to massage the cream into her arms.  Working his hands over her muscles, kneading and caressing, feeling her body heat under his touch, relaxed and languorous.  Hearing her say “Mmmm” sensuously as he works; hearing the strength of the smile in her voice.

Touching his lover’s body.  Something that once he’d never have dreamed of.  Not a woman paid-for from his pocket or Félix’s, not a woman who’s his only through fear, who’ll leave as swiftly as she came.  His lover; here by choice, and enjoying his presence, his touch, just as he is revelling in hers.  Whatever more can his life bring him, this life he’d never thought to have?

And if he goes on running his hands over Aurora’s flesh much longer, he’s going to need to cover his lap with something for a while and calm himself somehow.  Think about the least arousing thing he knows.  Having cold wet feet and no dry shoes.  Vomiting, or coughing, or a really bad sore throat.  Feeling an earth tremor, the silent jolt and the sick moment after it, wondering whether another shock, a full earthquake, will follow. 

Think of all the years he thought himself damned, when he had nothing to live for but vengeance. 

Then touch life, here, and rejoice in it; and don’t make a fool of yourself.

He presses one more kiss to the crown of her head; caps the bottle, and stands up.

“Want me to do yours?” murmurs Aurora.  She sounds half asleep, near-drugged with sunshine and pleasure.  He looks down at her and loves everything she is.

“I’m okay.  I’m going for a swim.  Need to cool off.”

Before this all gets too much, he means, though he cannot say it.  _Because when I touch you, I’m in real danger of getting as horn-hard as an adolescent, and I’m crazy for it, I don’t want to stop.  Because if I’m not careful I’m gonna come in these garish new shorts, right here, right now._

_The beach is full of children.  Christ!  Please, dear God, let the cold sea cool this blood of mine a little, I can’t just walk about in public with my scars on display and my dick getting stiff._

Perhaps full is an exaggeration; but there are plenty of families scattered here and there across the wide stretch of gold; young couples and grandparents, and little ones too young to be in school.  He tells himself _Cold water, cold water, think cold cold cold_ ; and runs towards it.

Waves on the sand; falling, sighing, drawing back.  The beach like a mirror surface where the water glazes and smoothes it continually.  Right on the farthest skyline, a white-hulled ship looks like a toy. 

Gabriel wades into the waters’ edge, the endlessly turning roll of surf at his ankles, then climbing his calves, the rise and fall of cool water; hitting his knees as he walks out, creeping up onto his thighs and down again.  The bottom hem of the shorts is wet now, fabric suddenly clinging to his skin.  He turns to glance back up the beach; there’s Aurora, snoozing in her nest of colours (red swimsuit, blue bag, yellow blanket, as though she’s a prism and all the day’s light centres round her).  The next wave is bigger, and slaps him across the ass.  He shuts down the immediate instinct to shout and turn in attack, and the childish secondary one to yelp; laughs, instead.  It’s been so long since he swam in the sea, and he’d forgotten.  Already the water down at his feet is starting to feel not cold at all but warm and comforting.

He peers down into the shifting, sparkling surface.  Here and there on the sea bottom are patches of shingle and coarse pebbles.  A strand of sea grass floats by, and pale small fish with black zebra stripes swim up and slip away again in the clear water. 

The horizon is huge, when he raises his head; a vast blue above, and a long, bright line of deepest azure.  Aurora’s sea, the blue backcloth of her life and her courage.  Now to be his also.  He wades in deeper; just two more strides and there’s a sudden drop-off underfoot.  The water leaps to chest height.  The waves slide up to his shoulders, his throat, and down again.  He looks back and sees the shore behind him, green and gold and sparks of bright colour, mountains like amethyst points.  Aurora sleeping.  A little child with a toy bucket and a pair of scarlet swim-bands running down the beach at top speed, hurtling into the moment of happiness.

Gabriel springs off the bottom, swims three strokes, four; plunges his head in the glass-clear water, raises it to take a deep breath, duck dives, kicking down.  He pushes his eyes open, sees blue light, and the swirl of suspended particles moving in the incoming swell.  A white half-shell on the sea-floor.  A trio of the striped fish, darting by unconcerned.  He surfaces again and rubs a wet hand across his wet face.  Bathed, baptised, saved.  The surface of life very bright around him.  The sea voices like a choir.

The child with the arm bands is splashing in the shallows, laughing-squealing at small waves; filling the bucket, running back up the slope of sand with it dripping and bumping, towards a mother in a white sundress who watches and smiles from a beach chair.

_Things I never dreamed of.  A new start, a clean page; a home, perhaps, and a lover, a family.  A life.  A  life to fill._

Gabriel stretches out in the water again, and swims.

There are much better swimmers out here in the rocking blue.  He can see someone doing a fast front crawl; a regular line of little sheering-off splashes, a sleek, be-goggled head that bobs right under and reappears.  Someone training for a race, maybe.  His own competent breast stroke a little stately by comparison.  But it’s a kind of ecstasy just the same, swimming in this warm blue, with the gulls drifting above and the sun on his back.  He swims for half an hour, slowly and steadily back and forth, parallel to the beach, until an aching tiredness reminds him that barely a month ago he was in hospital, this body held together with black stitches. 

At last he turns and starts to pull for the shore; stops for a breath, well within his depth now, and scans across the sand to see Aurora sitting up, watching him.  He waves, and sees her raise an arm.  There’s salt in his mouth, on his skin, trickling from his wet hair.  He’s so happy he cannot believe this reality.

His fingertips are wrinkled from the water, he’s thoroughly and healthily weary, and the picnic is waiting.  His girl is waiting.  He starts to wade in, towards the shallows. 

But close-in, almost at the waters’ edge, with waves rushing by and breaking, water singing all around him, it seems too much to ask of himself, to let these moments go.  Let the time last a little longer, let him not have to leave this sparkling, this blessing, yet.  He’s a child again, he knows he’s holding on to the last hours of a time out of time; a day of holiday, when no-one seems angry or afraid.

A waves rolls by, splashing against him.  Gabriel lets it pass, and watches it break in white curls and lace.  He sits down, in the water, in the shallows.  More waves come in, break, sigh back; loud bright water, surf, white sea-foam, skeining across the silvery wet sand.

_I’m being a child._

_I am so happy.  I had forgotten what this is._

He pushes himself back a little, into water that would be knee deep, then thigh-deep, if he stood; stretches out and lets himself roll in with the next wave.  And pushes back out, and does it again.  He’s never been a surfer, doesn’t even have a belly-board, but for a few seconds in the surge of each small breaker he can fling himself into the heart of this happiness of sea and play, and delight in it.  He hears his own voice laughing idiotically as he’s beached by a receding wave, and the next one is tiny, barely a ripple of coolness caressing his ribs.  Picks himself up and wades back, to ride the next wave in.

Just a few more waves.  A few more minutes.

It becomes so easy, so simple to roll back, roll in again, laugh and wallow and be splashed.  At one with the water, the sun. 

Then a wave hits him in the small of the back just as he’s picking himself up, and knocks him flat.  Bigger, much bigger, than its predecessor; almost taking the air from his lungs, the impact hard and the water right over his head for a moment as it rushes past him.  All the sense of freedom and fun vanishes and Gabriel hauls himself up onto his knees feeling jolted and undignified, with sand in his eyes.  He looks back reproachfully at the sea.

The next breaker is upon him already.  It’s big.  Far, far too big.  He stares up at it, into it, in disbelief; lurches and almost gets one foot under himself.  Then a wall of clear water hits and takes him under.

He didn’t have time to take any more breath than was in his lungs anyway.   There was no time, and time seems to have ceased, expanded, gone to wild random noise; time is throwing him about like a rag, blinding him with chaos, roaring around him.  He’s rolled and twisted and flung up, pummelled and dragged down.  What strength he has in him is useless but he fights nonetheless, holding his breath, staring into the thrashing white water, helpless.

_Fuck.  Fuck, fuck, ugh._

A vivid, vivid memory rises from nowhere, of standing beside Félix in the old house,  of laughing politely with his lips closed, while Félix laughed uproariously, hands on hips and tears in his eyes, over a story on the TV news about a cat trapped in a washing machine.  Washed and rinsed for thirty minutes before anyone noticed, and emerging alive, soaked and bedraggled and furious.  The photograph of the cat, ears back, eyes yellow with rage and fear; Félix laughing and laughing and laughing, Cayuco and the boys joining in, until everyone was laughing, all around him.

_I’m the cat in the washing machine._

Then the roaring recedes abruptly, and Gabriel breathes and thanks God and breathes. 

 _Ugh, that was vile_. 

He hauls himself up onto his hands and knees, shaking his dazed head and gasping.  Is just starting to get to his feet when the next wave hits, while he’s still off-balance, and swallows him again. 

_Fuck!_

Roaring.  Rolling.  Struggling.  Slammed against the beach and ripped off it again.

There’s more sand in the churning water, this time, the washing machine load more tan now than white.  Something strikes the back of his thigh, hard, a smack like a blow from a policeman’s baton.  One of his own hands passes in front of him, flailing at the water, clutching on nothing. 

It looks weird, like a starfish in a nebula of water. 

Very strange, this detachment, this calm place in his terrified mind.  He can see a thousand things that had never occurred to him until now, until this moment with the breakers flinging him about and beating him.

The second time the water recedes he’s more prepared; instantly draws in air, begins struggling to his feet.  But his legs are like rubber and they crumple under him as another big wave strikes and sucks him down.

There was yelling, for that brief instant above the water.  Now he’s below again, below and rolled and pounded, and blind; there’s nothing to hold onto but his breath and the determined will not to drown, and the shocked realisation that it’s possible he might.

Something else strikes, on his shoulder; strikes and shifts down, and grips him under the arm.  He grabs back and claws, and holds on.  There’s a strong hand lifting him up, an arm solid in his grip and leverage, he can brace himself as another wave hits, can get from his knees to his feet and brace again for the next.  He looks around, wildly, shaking water from his eyes and out of his hair.  Air.  Air.  The next breaker smashes onto his hips and lower back and he lurches.  Holds steady, braced by his rescuer’s arm.

It’s the man with the goggles, the front crawl swimmer.  One muscular arm supporting Gabriel, the other arm in turn held and anchored by Aurora, two metres off with the wild water thrashing round her, thigh-deep.  She in turn is braced and supported by the young mother in the white dress. 

The swimming man steadies him and together they take two steps towards Aurora.  Then brace themselves again, as another big breaker curls in.  He reaches out his free hand and is able to catch her arm.  Three of them now, hauling themselves another step, dragging through the undertow.  Every muscle and bone in his body seems to be quivering.

The child with the bucket is standing a few metres back from the suddenly much-higher tide-line, staring.  His mother, helping save a man swept off his feet and near to drowning.

“Thank you,” Gabriel gasps, to the man with the goggles.  “Thank you” to the young mum.  He looks at Aurora, and her face is hard with shock, her eyes very wide.  “My God, thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” the man says.  “You okay?”

“Yeah.  I think so.”

“Gabriel, Gabriel…”  They’re in the shallows, and although the water is still dragging at his feet, he’s hardly aware of it compared to the solid, secure warmth of the hands holding him up.  Four figures wading out and standing on the sand, one of them  staggering a little.  Aurora releases the other two and puts her arms round him, both embracing and holding him up.  “Gabriel…”

“I’m okay.  Thank you, all of you, thank you.”

“You’re bleeding,” Aurora says.  “Your knee, your hand.”

“I’m okay.”

He turns to the others, offers his right hand, the unbloodied one.  “Thank you.”  Shakes with each of them in turn.  Weird, weird, to feel he must be so formal, but God alone knows how many more times he would have been knocked down and sucked underwater before managing to crawl out, without their help.  If he would even have made it at all.  There are thanks to be given, thanksgivings to be said, for this.

“You’re welcome,” says the young mother.  The lower part of her sundress trails in the water’s edge, translucent now, soaked through.  She goes up onto the dry sand, to her son watching, and bends to scoop him up. “My brave boy!  It was Javier who saw you were in trouble, señor.  I’m just glad I was able to help.”

“It must have been that big ship,” the swimmer offers.  “Cruise-liner, a while ago.  Big wake like that, out of nowhere.  Nasty.”

“Yes.”  Not much else he can say to that.  “Nasty.  Thank you for your help.”

“Gabriel.  Come and sit down, rest.  Let me look at your knee.” Aurora sounds brisk and sensible.  “Come on, love, let’s get you a towel.”

“Thank you.”  It seems to be the main thing he can say.  It merits saying.  _Thank you, Lord, that was nasty, thank you for letting me get out, thank you…_

The sunlight is almost glaring, as if everywhere he looks the world is just a fraction too bright.  He can still feel the minute shivering of muscles in shock, deep inside him, and his heart is still thundering on his ribs.  He puts an arm round Aurora and lets her hug him and lead him away.  They walk back up the each, to their picnic spot, to the dry warm towel and the food waiting, and the ordinary safety there.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't easy to write; firstly because the shift from idyllic beach fun to near-disaster was tricky to get right, and secondly because what happens to Gabriel is based very closely on personal experience. Even now several years later I still feel slightly weird remembering what it was like to be so completely helpless in the water, being dragged under and wondering how long it would be before I could get my head above the surface and take another breath, and whether I was even strong enough to get out of this.


	9. Chapter 9

“We need to talk, don’t we?  About – all this.”

They’re in the car and he’s driving them back, heading up-country into the westering light.

He isn’t quite sure what she means.  But she’s probably right.  There is a lot they’ve never talked about, God have mercy on them, there is _too much_ they’ve never talked about; and he’s not even sure if words can ever approach the heart of it, and the wounds there.  All the deaths and cruelties in the past, that he’s been allowing himself to think they could forget, and move beyond.

Gabriel takes a breath.  Before he can find a reason to avoid the subject, he nods. 

She turns her head to study him more closely and he realises she can’t look him in the eye because of his sunglasses.  She can’t read his expression; for all she knows, he might be nodding curtly and in anger.  Aurora’s face is tensely quiet, but not calm.

“We’ve spent all this time not talking about what happened,” she says. “But it – we need to, Gabriel.”

Is she speaking just of what happened today? “Okay” he says slowly. “Okay.  You’re right.”

Shadows pass over the car in long streaks, from the cord of trees looped along the roadside verge.  Flicker of bright light, flicker of shade; the surface of the road is almost violet in the shadow, and hot gold in the late sun. 

“I almost lost you.  I wasn’t even looking.  That woman screamed and I looked up, and…  I almost lost you.  **You** almost lost you.”

“But it didn’t happen,” Gabriel says.  Still slightly astonished by that fact. “I’m okay, those people helped me get out.”

“Yes.  I know.” She lays a hand on his for a moment, where he’s holding the gear-change. “But – you’ve survived everything, till now, and then – to be so nearly lost, in a stupid accident.”

“I - I’m sorry I scared you.”

“This isn’t about me!  I – yes, my God, Gabriel, I was scared, yes, but – you deserve better.  Your new start; you deserve a chance for it to happen.”

“Thank you,” he says.  He isn’t sure whether to be glad she thinks so, or hurt that she says her own feelings don’t matter.  Or afraid, that she really believes this.  That he deserves a chance.

“ _Thank you?_   Is that all?  My God.  Weren’t you scared?” Aurora asks. “You seemed so calm.  Like you don’t care if you live or die.”

“Fuck.  No, I do care.  I was – it’s just that – fuck.” How on earth can he explain it? “It was like – there wasn’t time to be scared.  Just to - see everything.  To regret.”

“Ah.  Regret.  Yes.” Her voice is very quiet.

“I have done that, though.  In the past.  I think you know this.  I have - not cared if I died.  For so many years.  Known I didn’t deserve anything, life, hope, any of it.  That’s why it’s – that’s why if I died now, I would regret so much.”

They’re coming up towards the turn-off for the Béznar dam and the picnic site overlooking the reservoir.  The slanting sunlight is almost painful in his eyes, and he suddenly wants to sit quietly and watch the light on the lake, and not have to drive.  Not have to move.  Not have a conversation that feels dark and serious, when he’s still not quite sure if his feet are solid on the ground. “Aurora – could we stop here?  Just for a while.”

She looks startled, but “Of course.”

The car turns and swings off the motorway, onto the approach road.  The pines by the water come closer, and the blue beyond, three-quarters of it shadowed now as the sun drops towards the mountains.  The air will be cool in the shade.  Gabriel wants that, to be cold, out of the sun’s glare.

There’s just one car in the parking area when they get down to the water’s edge; a big family saloon, with a baby seat in the back and soft toys on the rear shelf.  No sign of the owners.  The café is still open but the young man staffing it is reading; he glances up from his magazine, nods at them, and returns to the page.

They leave their car under the trees and walk down to the path along the lakeside, in silence.

Gabriel wants.  It’s a thing so unfamiliar to him, he feels it in his throat, like an illness, like breath cut short by a tightened garrotte.  He wants to feel cool fresh air, wants to smell the spicy pine duff again tomorrow and the next day, to touch her hand and not struggle to know if this can ever really happen; he wants, he _wants_ , as he has never wanted in his life.  To understand, to apologise, to change, to be changed.  To be able to say everything he’s struggling to frame, everything he’s never needed to find the words for, till now.  Everything he’s seen.  Life was simpler, back then when he was blind, and obedient.  Life is a labyrinth now, complex tangling roads and junctions with dark passageways to choose. 

He wants to tell her.  He does not know how.

He wants the life that was never for him, and maybe never for her either.  The one where he’s a clean man who can offer himself gladly, and she’s a woman whose past is open to the light; the one where they can say _I love you_ , where they can marry, buy an apartment, have a child, where they can go to work and draw a pension one day, and take their grandchildren for picnics.

A frail light burns in him and cannot be put out, hoping that there’s some way they can still live that life together.  He wants to tell her that as well.  

All the non-existent words, the inexpressible wants, are strangling him. 

No-one ever cared before what Gabriel wanted, and he never cared enough for himself to consider it.

Now he has to.

He walks down the path under the pines, towards the burning afternoon glare on the water, with Aurora at his side, and he knows nothing, nothing, nothing of how to speak, how to tell her his heart, how to be hers.  He could have died today; once again he could be a dead man now, and still he can’t speak.  It hurts.

Aurora is watching him as they walk.  He takes off the sunglasses, puts them in the pocket of his shirt.  Rests his eyes on her; and she smiles sadly.

“I don’t know where to begin,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

They sit down; avoiding the shaded picnic benches and both heading to the wall overlooking the reservoir, where they can perch, facing one another and with knees touching, but looking out at the water.   

“I can’t bear it,” Aurora says after a long silence. “That you didn’t care if you died, once.  And I didn’t care, once.  I didn’t care if I died so long as I caused some hurt first.  I hated so much.  The fucked-up world.  Everyone who hurt me.  And myself for not being stronger.  Hate.  Hitting back.  It isn’t much to build a new life out of.”

“No, it isn’t.” The light from the west gilds her eyes and the creases round her mouth.  He loves her expression, the trouble and the strength in her face. “But you are.”

“I’m trying to.  And I don’t want to lose - another person I care about.  But it’s inescapable.  Unless I never care for anyone.  I don’t think I can do that, now.  Life was easier, when – before.  All I wanted was revenge.”

“All I had once was revenge, too...” And it’s painful to say it, but it’s a different pain from the one he’s been expecting, and that gives him a few more breaths, a little more oxygen.  He gathers himself and tells her.  She has a right to know. “My father murdered my mother.  He beat her to death.  I swore when I was old enough I would kill him.  Everything else had to be done, so that one day I could do that.  Vengeance.  But – I saw what Félix did, to your sister.  I knew.  He was no better than my Papa.  And I did nothing.  Then I met you.  I had to decide, and I did.  I would betray Félix, he would have me killed, my vengeance would never happen.  But I would have done the right thing, one time at least.” There are sparrows chirping above them in one of the trees, and the sky is beginning to turn red. “I knew it wouldn’t save my soul,” he says after a moment. “But it felt good to make that choice.”

“I didn’t know,” Aurora says quietly.  “I am sorry.” Then “My sister - you told me before, that you knew he was beating her.”

The air, and his lips, his eyes, his heart, all freeze.  He has to confirm it.  Gabriel says “Yes” numbly.  Remembers hauling the Señora out of one bar or another, so many times, thinking _Well, he married a whore, what did he expect?_  Ignoring the bruises on her face next day.   _She married the boss, what did she expect?_   Remembers running his hand over her hair as she lay in that hospital bed.  Lying just as he would lie too, one day, kept alive by a tube and a machine. 

Remembers another hospital, another bruised and broken face and another machine beeping steadily and then stopping; and his small fingers clenching white on the enamelled bed-frame, his small voice trying not to cry.

Aurora swallows hard, and waits.  She has the right to wait.  So he drives himself on.  Takes a breath and says “The man who beats a woman or a child is damned forever.” And breathe again.  He who is still breathing has to make sense of this, that Mama died, who was an innocent, and Aurora’s sister died, who was just a whore who wanted a better life, an innocent too in her way; they died and he lived. “And also I think the man who doesn’t stop it.  But I am alive.  This new beginning - I don’t deserve it, but - I have to do something to atone, if I can.  In order to live.  Since I’m still in the sight of God.”

Aurora’s face is grave and full of pain.  She looks away from him, out at the water and the fire from heaven reflected in it. 

“Do you believe in God?” he asks her.

“Not anymore.” She thinks and then shakes her head again, harder. “I won’t give that honour to something that allows so many massacres of innocents.” And she thinks again.  He waits, because these are not simple things, and Aurora always speaks thoughtfully. “No, it’s not that exactly.  I’m not an atheist.  I was glad when I found that Ana had a proper funeral.  But I won’t bow my head to – I won’t accept the God I’ve been given.”

From behind them, in the slowly-gathering dusk under the pine woods, there’s a burst of happy noise, children’s voices chattering and laughing, the sound of footsteps.  Gabriel looks round and sees the family have arrived back at the other car in the parking area and are packing up to leave.  The father is distributing snacks and juice boxes from a bag to two older kids while the mother buckles a smaller child into the baby-seat.  She folds a stroller and pushes it into the trunk, comes round the car with a smile and accepts a juice carton from her husband.

“In the diner,” Aurora says “When I said you have to treat me well, when you said you’d imagined things with me.  I believed you, I thought - you were thinking the same as me.  That we – we could have –“

“Yes.  That we could be together –“

“That we’d crossed over a boundary somehow.  I felt so sure.  That you were as certain as I about –“

“Yes.  I was.  I am.  But –“ he has to say it, they’re having the conversation and these are the words that make fear and knowledge pool in his chest like blood – “now, I wonder, I fear – can this work?”

“We are good together,” Aurora says.  Not reassuring him so much as simply stating it. “What was between Ana and that son of a bitch, whatever it was – I know it was some sort of desire but - it’s not what I feel when we’re together.  I don’t think Félix ever respected her.  And you –“

“You beat us.  You took us all on and you won, you crushed us to powder and didn’t look back; and you gave me my life.  Respect you?  I’d follow you like a queen.”

“There you go, worshipping me again.” There’s an offhand humour in her voice, but Gabriel isn’t joking.

“It’s not worship,” he says emphatically. “I love you.” And those are not words he should have said now, nor have spoken like this, so forcefully.  He wants to tell her _I will always follow you_ and instead he’s saying this thing that is so famously possessive and intimidating.  His voice shakes like a child’s as he goes on. “But if I ask you to be with me, to go with me – am I doing the same thing Félix did to your sister?  Trying to hold onto you, to own – to have ownership?”

He moistens his lips.  His hands are sweating in the evening cool.  The colour in the sky bleeds into violet, stains the water and the thin veins of cloud.

Aurora says very softly “Oh, Gabriel.” Her face is serious and tender. “Ah, my dear.  You’re not asking me to go with you.  You’re asking me to let you follow me.  As if I were better than you.  You just said it.  A queen.” 

“It’s the only way I know how to love.” The light is going quite fast now.  There don’t seem to be any lights coming on in the car park. “I’m sorry.  I will learn to love better.  If you let me.  It’s hard to know how but I’ll – I will find out.”

“Forgive me,” Aurora says “I have to ask.  Did you love Félix?”

Gabriel winces inside and feels his jaw tighten though he tries to hide it.  This is a truth he may never be at ease with. “Yes.”

He hears the family drive away, and a hush falls after the sound of their cars fades.  Says “He was there when no-one else was.  He was my friend.  The only person who trusted me.  I didn’t let myself see when he crossed the line.  When he did things a man shouldn’t do.  He was like a brother to me.  But he was never – he was the one I followed.” He shakes his head.

“You turned from him, for us.  For me.”

“For you, yes.  Because I saw what I was.  What I’d become.  I’d followed him and then I betrayed him, and he had trusted me.  I’m ashamed, and I’m ashamed to be ashamed of it.  I don’t know if I will ever stop feeling this.  He was my friend and I loved him and I betrayed him.  But maybe I’ve damned myself for him.”

Félix is suddenly vivid in his mind, alive and insouciant and handsome, clapping him on the back, listening to his advice, making a joke to see him smile.  Lighting a candle for his mother when no-one else did.  Kind to those who followed and obeyed well.  Like a king.

“Do you miss him?”

He lets out a long breath; doesn’t inhale again for a moment and then says in a rush “Yes, I do.  And at the same time, I’m glad I’ll never see him again.”

“Thank you,” Aurora says slowly “for being honest with me about that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, please.  Thank you for the truth.  Gabriel, this – what’s between us, this thing, you called it love just now, maybe it is that, it could be, I don’t know.  But I do know that it will never last if we cannot talk to one another.  I miss Ana too.  My sister was a fool but I wasn’t ready to lose her.”

She reaches out one hand to him, fingers stretching and curling back repeatedly, as if she’s trying to gather courage to touch someone who has said _I love you_. “If I hadn’t made her go first she would’ve been caught too and she’d never have met him.  It seemed like the right choice to make.  I thought I was protecting her by taking the fall but I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I was killing her –“ For a moment her voice shakes wildly.

He’ll ask her one day what she means.  He prays and hopes to be allowed that chance.  But for now Gabriel does the only thing he can, and takes her hesitant hand and cradles it.

“We’ve come through a lot of darkness,” she says, very soft.  Squeezes his fingers. 

“I don’t know what happens next,” he tells her. “How to live, what to do with myself, with my life.  How to – not be a follower.  How to be a different man.  How to be with you.  I can’t tell you.  I don’t know what will happen.”

“I know.  I - can accept that.  I think I have to.” Another gentle pressure from her hand. “When I was in prison I always knew what would happen.  But that was prison.”

The evening sky has changed, quite suddenly it’s no longer red and purple above the water but a thousand darkening shades of indigo, and the light is fading richly and fast.

“I’m not a good man,” Gabriel says. 

“I’m not a good woman.  But there’s good in me, and there is in you.  We can’t just find the answers and make all well in a week.”

“I know.  I know that.” He holds the hand that has touched him, that has loved him, holds onto her strength and tries to give her his, in the gathering dark.  The path has vanished into shadows; they will have to help one another back to the car.  His phone gives a bit of light, if you angle it carefully.  Probably hers does to.  And the paving was level.  They should be okay.

"I want to move on,” he says. “I want to know how to.  But how can people like us ever get past what’s happened to us?  What we’ve been?"

"We're too fucked up, is that what you're saying?"

"No. No, Aurora, no.  But - I don't know how we do this."

"Gabriel, all your life you've had instructions from someone.  Just like I had in prison.  _Do this, go there, shut up.  Kill them,  and them, follow your orders._ Now it's just you.  And me.  If you'll have me.  I don't know how we do this either.  But we can start.  See what happens."

"See where it goes?"

She smiles, rueful in the dark and perhaps no longer a queen, but no longer a prisoner either and with him still. "Yes.  Just begin."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to gloriouswhisperstyphoon for helping me break through the writer's block on this story.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've enjoyed this, come and find me on tumblr; Imsfire2...


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